How to set the paragraph indentation unit to points or other units instead of centimeters in Writer?

Development
1

Can I use Python to retrieve or modify UNO commands for this? I don’t want to change it globally, as different users have different unit preferences.

2

hii @honliideal

You can use Python via UNO to get or set measurement units per user or per document, without changing them globally.

Example (global read):

config = ctx.ServiceManager.createInstanceWithContext(
    "com.sun.star.configuration.ConfigurationProvider", ctx
)

Example (per-document):

view = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument().getCurrentController().getViewSettings()
view.setPropertyValue("Metric", 2)  # 1=cm, 2=mm, 3=inch

ViewSettings.Metric affects only the current document view.
Use ConfigurationAccess only for reading global preferences.

3

Thank you for the reply, but I wrote a unit test and it threw an error immediately.

I checked the ViewSettings object using LibreOffice’s development tools, and it doesn’t have any Metric-related properties either.

def TestSetMetric():

view = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument().getCurrentController().getViewSettings()

\# 1=cm, 2=mm, 3=inch

view.setPropertyValue("Metric", 2)

‘ooo_script_framework.com.sun.star.beans.UnknownPropertyException’>: Metric
File “D:\soft\LibreOffice\program\pythonscript.py”, line 921, in invoke
ret = self.func( *args )
File “D:\soft\LibreOffice\share\Scripts\python\honlitechpy\honlitech-frontend-colla\scripts\writer\Debug.py”, line 548, in TestSetMetric
view.setPropertyValue(“Metric”, 2)
))

4

LibreOffice (and thus UNO) internally uses 1/100 mm (hundredths of a millimeter) for all layout and formatting metrics.
That’s why you can ignore user UI units entirely when using UNO: the document model always stores and expects values in that fixed internal unit.

So:

User value Conversion UNO value to set
1.27 cm 12.7 mm × 100 1270
10 pt ≈ 3.528 mm 3.528 × 100 ≈ 353
1 inch 25.4 mm × 100 2540

You don’t need to read or set user display units for formatting purposes.
Just:

  • Convert user-facing units → 1/100 mm,
  • Set the UNO property (e.g. ParaLeftMargin, ParaFirstLineIndent, etc.).

That ensures your macro or automation behaves consistently for all users, independent of their personal unit preferences.

5

Got it. The previous code still couldn’t change the unit, and I noticed that this is related to the user’s current locale. The development team should provide an interface allowing users to choose their preferred unit, as everyone has different habits.

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