An equivalent of the Word's Outline View, with the OpenOffice.org Writer Navigator

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Who hasn't had one of these experiences?

• You're writing your guide to gardening, you're looking at the headings for your garden-preparation chapter, and you realize you have made instructions for the compost pile a level-3 small section when it should really be a chapter of its own.
  
• You think, re-reading the first draft of your novel, "No, the dream sequence should come first to grab people, and I'll put the conversation between Grimelda and her guru in chapter five after the chariot race."
• You are tired of scrolling through your document and you want to just go directly to the section on shoe-making so you can add the cool new stuff about suede. Or you've put in a table, or a graphic, and you want to go directly to it to make some changes.
• You're writing a 680-page document and you just want to read through the main heading titles and make sure that they're in a good order, that you're using parallel grammatical structure, that you're capitalizing correctly, etc.

In Word you might use the Outline view. In OpenOffice Writer, you use the Navigator.

Press F5 and you'll see the Navigator window.

First: What you need to do in your document to make sure the Navigator works for you

You must either use the Heading1 through Heading10 styles on the text that is used as your document headings. Or you can apply other styles to your headings and set them up at the right levels; choose Tools > Outline Numbering. (See this entry for more on outline numbering.)

Applying the heading styles

This picture shows how to apply the Heading1-Heading10 styles in a simpler  example, a document about bread.

Modifying how the heading styles look

If you don't like how the Heading1-Heading10 styles look, right-click on any text with the style you don't like applied to it, and choose Edit Paragraph Style. Make your changes in the formatting window that appears and click OK.

Then: What you can do with the Navigator

You can:

• View all the headings in your document: just the top levels, just the top and second levels, and on down
• Jump from one section to another just by double-clicking
• Jump to other items in the navigator such as tables, bookmarks, or charts, just by double-clicking
• Turn chapters into sections by demoting and vice versa
• Easily drag sections to different places in your document to re-order the document: not just chapters but any section that starts with a Heading1-Heading10 style, or with whatever styles you set up under Outline Numbering.

Viewing the Headings

In the Navigator, press F5. You'll see all the headings. The icon labeled Heading Levels Shown lets you see only Heading1s, only Heading1s and Heading2s, etc.

Click as shown to view the number of heading levels you want.

Jumping from one section to another

I'm currently at the top of the document.

I double-click the Breweries and Wineries sub-section and bam, that's what's displayed in the document itself.

Jump to other objects in the document: tables, bookmarks, etc.

I double-click the Table1 item (I don't name my tables but you can when you choose Insert > Table) and immediately it's displayed.

Change chapters to sections and vice versa by promoting and demoting heading levels

Let's say I want the Romance section to be less important, a heading level or two down. It's currently assigned the Heading2 style so it's at level 2.

I can just click on it, then click the Demote Level icon as many times as needed to move the section to where I want it. I clicked it once so now Romance is at level 3. (And Jazz and other sections below it were moved down, as well.)

Ditto for making sections more important; click the Promote Level icon.

Re-order sections in the document

Let's say I want the chapter Getting Here and Getting Around to be earlier in the document, not last. It's a Heading1 and I don't want to change that, but it's now starting on page 22 (look in the bottom left corner) and I want it earlier in the document.

I click Promote Chapter and it's now earlier in the document. It's at the same level, as you can see by the applied style, but it's now on page 16 as you can see in the lower left corner.

I can do the same thing with lower-level sections. I can take the By Train subsection here, currently before By Car

click Demote Icon, and now it's the last section in the document, not second to last. It's after the By Car section.

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Comments

[Brian]

Just in time! Normally I work with spreadsheets a lot more than written documents. But, I've got a couple of projects coming up and will be word processing my little heart out for a while. This will be a big help. Thanks!

[Bogdan Bivolaru]

Marvelous! Just what I was looking for, for quite a while, but I didn't have the time to check by myself.

I also bookmarked your blog for future references. Thanks!

[Solveig]

Hi Brian,

I'm glad it's useful! Have fun in Writer land.

Solveig

[Solveig]

Hi Bogdan,

Great! Btw, all questions/suggestions for blog topics are welcome.

Solveig