Jumping to Particular Spots, and Rearranging Content, in an OpenOffice Writer Document, and Using Draw

Moving Around Easily Between Sections in the Navigator

I saw this question on LiveJournal by madscience but couldn't post an answer because of the Friends Only setting. I thought it was a good question, though, so I'll post it here.

"Is it possible to set up chapters or sections in an OpenOffice Writer document so that I can jump to them easily, like maybe with tabs or a tree like some PDFs have? I found something called "sections" in the documentation, but it doesn't sound like what I'm looking for.'

Definitely. Press F5 and you'll see the Navigator window.

You can expand the Headings option and just double-click the heading name to jump to that part of the document.

(This is only if you've used the Heading1 through Heading10 styles, or if you've used other styles for your headings and set them up at the right levels under Tools > Outline Numbering.)

You can also jump to anything listed in that window that you have set up--graphics, bookmarks (Insert > Bookmark), cross references, notes, etc.

You're right, sections aren't what you want, but if you have them you can double-click them in Navigator and go to them.

Rearranging Sections in Writer by Moving Headings in the Navigator

You can move one section of your document to an earlier or later part of the document easily in the Navigator too. Again, you need to have applied paragraph styles to your headings such as Heading1, Heading2, etc.

In the Navigator, just select the heading for the section you want to move.

Then click the Promote Chapter icon or the Demote Chapter icon as many times as needed to move the section to where you want it. In this picture, the 1950s and Bread section now comes before Romans and Bread.

Other Good Alternative Open Source Software

Another question from LiveJournal from fadedletterlost

"Alternative Software
I love alternative software, especially when it is a piece of free software that does basically the same function as a far more expensive version. What are some good alternative softwares that you have found?

MS Office alternative: OpenOffice
Photoshop?
Movie Creation Software?
First Person Shooter?

So on and so forth..."

A lot of people do stuff in Photoshop or Gimp that is easier to do in OpenOffice Draw. (File > New > Drawing.) If you're doing diagrams or anything that's not direct raster editing, do it in Draw, then export to EPS, JPG, PNG, whatever.

You do have slight raster control in Draw -- adjust RGB, make things B/W or grayscale, control contrast and lightness, etc.

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Comments

[Daniel Feiglin]

Navigator - Yes I saw that but ...
In MS Word you can use Ctl F to open Search. You can use the the third tab (Go to) to go to a specific page in a doc. How do you go do that in OO?

[Solveig]

Hi Daniel,

You use the Navigator. Press F5, and in the page number field type the page to go to and press Enter. You don't even need to go to a different tab.

[Libor Chocholaty]

Hi,
Navigator is a great tool however, is there a way how to jump directly to specific page number without opening Navigator, clicking to the page number field, type page number there and press Enter? Something like Ctrl-G in kpdf, which opens small dialog with focus in the input field for page number... It is simple and very fast because you cannot move your hand from keyboard to a mouse and back again.