Quick Tips on Sections in OpenOffice Writer

Sections are great. They're a way to partition off part of the content of a text document and treat it differently.

Quick Overview of Sections
Select your text that you want treated differently, choose Insert > Section, and choose any of the options in this window and the tabs such as Columns, Background, etc.

When you insert a section, it just means the content you selected is now partitioned off and assigned the attributes you specified in the Insert Section window.

This section below is in two columns with a gray background, because I used the Columns and Background tabs to apply those settings.

For this next sample section, I didn't select any text -- I just choose Insert > Section, chose Link, and specified the legal.odt file.   Here are those settings in the section window.

And here are the results. The contents of the legal.odt file got sucked into my current document where I inserted the link. Now anytime somebody changes the contents of the legal.odt file, those changes show up in the my document, too, since I've linked to that file.

To edit the section, choose Format > Section and select the section to change options for or delete.

I could write a whole bunch about sections. However, the main point of this blog is to point out a few things about knowing which section you're in.

Managing Sections
Name your sections. When you have more than one section in a document, things can get confusing if you don't name them.

So when you choose Insert > Section to create the section, type something more clearly memorable for the name.

Or if you've already got sections, choose Format > Section and rename them.

The current section name is displayed in the lower right corner of your document.  If you're not sure what section you're in, click in it. Look in the lower right corner, as shown.

Also if you click in a section and choose Format > Section, the section name will be highlighted.

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Comments

[Ismael Fanlo]

And the option "DDE"? What is the utility of this checkbox for a section linked?

(sorry for my English; I'm spanish speaker) ;-)

[Solveig]

Hi Ismael,

The DDE link is for the programmery among us; I haven't used it. I use the Link option with the browse button to link to a file, but not the DDE option. I'm really not sure what the DDE link option offers beyond the link option, except, I guess, to be able to insert a specific cell. But as the help info below says, you can achieve the same effect with edit > Paste special, link, and then make that pasted content a normal section.

Here's the online help info:

"Creates a DDE link. Select this check box, and then enter the DDE command that you want to use. The DDE option is only available if the Link check box is selected.
The general syntax for a DDE command is: " ", where server is the DDE name for the application that contains the data. Topic refers to the location of the Item (usually the file name), and Item represents the actual object.
For example, to insert a section named "Section1" from a OpenOffice.org text document abc.sxw as a DDE link, use the command: "soffice x:\abc.sxw Section1". To insert the contents of the first cell from a MS Excel spreadsheet file called "abc.xls", use the command: "excel x:\[abc.xls]Sheet1 z1s1". You can also copy the elements that you want to insert as a DDE link, and then Edit - Paste Special. You can then view the DDE command for the link, by selecting the contents and choosing Edit - Fields."