Hello Yohanan,
Welcome to Nisus! Nisus is a fantastic word processor, very easy to use once you have understood how it works, and it's extremely powerful.
I believe all the issues you mention can be easily solved. Before I address your specific questions, let me first make some general remarks.
Since you are new to Nisus, I would suggest you first watch the video by James Tummins on YouTube about creating styles in Nisus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zwKDgk8XYs
Then you must read about styles in the Nisus Writer Pro Help to get an idea what you can do, if you haven't done that already. Although Nisus is very easy to use for those who understand how it works, it is also a very complex application. Therefore the 'Nisus Writer Pro Help' is a must read.
Now, having said that, the good news first: if you have used styles in Word and happen to have some favorite styles, you can most likely use them in Nisus too. Just export a Word document as Rich Text File and then open it in Nisus. You should see the Word styles in the Style Sheet. Not all Word specific attributes may be supported though.
Now let's talk about something that many new users are not aware of and may cause some confusion. When you open a new document in Word and in Nisus, you are actually opening an already predefined template with (certain) styles in it (unless you have deliberately deleted all styles in that template, of course, which is possible.) If you change the template during your working session in Word, Word will *ask* you whether you want to save the changes before you quit the application. Nisus doesn't do this. If you choose 'New' from the File menu, Nisus always opens the same template, called 'Nisus New File'. If you now start working and you create the most fantastic styles with breathtaking formatting, and then save the document and quit Nisus—the next time you start Nisus and create a new document all your fantastic styles will be "gone." That's because you didn't save them to 'Nisus New File'. Actually, the styles are not gone, they are still in the document you were working on. In order to have a direct *permanent* access to them, you'll need to save them to the … , well you guessed it, to the 'Nisus New File'. You can also save the styles to a so called Style Library. That's a file/container for styles. Think of a style library as a warehouse where you *store* your styles.
If you create a style that you do not intend to use often, you should save it in a Style Library in order to be able to import it later into a document you want to have it in. If you have very few styles, then only one single Style Library suffice. If, on the other hand, you have many styles, then consider creating many Style Libraries, for example, one Style Library for scholarly papers, one for formal letters, one for books (if you write books), one for linguistic papers (if you are a linguist) and so forth. You can keep as many Style Libraries as you want.
To save styles to a Style Library, switch to Style Sheet View, select the style(s) in the style list on the left, and then press the button "Save to Style Library…". Press the button "Import from Style Library" to import one or more styles into a document.
What I could not successfully achieve was to import styles from one of my documents.
Be assured, it's ridiculously easy. You can:
1. Select all text in the document which has the styles and then simply drag the text into the other document. Then delete the text you dragged. The new styles remain.
2. Switch to the Style Sheet View in both documents. Now just drag the styles you want in the left column from one document to the other.
OR
3. First save the styles to a Style Library, then import them into a document you want to have them in.
I have a great number of docs on my machine […] and I would like to know if there is a way to unify the styles, for I have less than ten paragraph styles I use in most of my docs.
Maybe…, if I only knew what you mean by "unify styles" ?! Reducing the number is of course no problem. Just make sure that the ten paragraph styles you need are in the 'Nisus New File'.
Right now, each time I open a new doc, I have to redefine my styles.
That's because you need to *save* the redefined styles to your 'Nisus New File'.
A little problem I met with since on Nisus, was that at the end of a document my 'Normal' defined style got back to another font (Times) and I could not solve this otherwise than by the Special copy characters attributes from another paragraph.
I don't understand. What do you mean by "end of document"? You mean the last character or does the document end with a Return character that has another style value than the preceding text? I have also no idea what you mean by "Special copy character". Please upload a screenshot.
What happens when you are at the "end of a document" and then open the Styles palette (Window menu > Palettes > Styles) and click on the 'Normal' style?
Hi, sorry to disturb.
Wow, that's what I call being humble…! In the Nisus forum you have not only the right to remain silent, but also to ask questions, as many questions you like and as often as you like, and nothing you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
I cannot find import styles into my library, neither in the menus nor in the help.
You *save* styles
INTO a Style Library and *import* styles
FROM a Style Library. This is done in the Style Sheet View.
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