OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

You want this extension for yourself and everyone you know who uses OpenOffice Writer: the easy "no page number on first page" option and much, much more.

Charles Brunet, thank you. The people who created the extension capability for OpenOffice.org, thank you.

I've been longing, for years, for a simple "no page number on first page" checkbox.  This is great. I'm only sorry I didn't see it til today.

Everybody, now, click here to get the extension. IT folks, get this extension now for all your users.

1. Download the extension.

2. In OpenOffice.org, choose Tools > Extension Manager, select My Extensions.

3. Click Add.

4. Find the downloaded extension file.

5. Restart OpenOffice.org.

6. In any Writer document, choose Insert Page Number.

7. You'll get this window with its many clear, useful options. The headers and footers are inserted automatically if you choose them, and you can choose the page number style. And, of course, there's the wonderful "no page number on first page" option.

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Going to a specific page in OpenOffice Writer, Using the Navigator

Here's a quick tip for how to go to a specific page.

- Press F5 to bring up the Navigator. (Read more about this great tool here.)

- You'll see one field with a number in it. That's the page number field.

- Type the page number to go to, and press Enter.

- You'll go to that page.

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Quick Guide to Creating Automatic Tables of Contents

I've got this post with a PDF from my workbooks on how to create tables of contents. However, I wanted to also make one that's just here in the web site, and with fewer details.

This is  a table of contents in Writer. Never, ever create one from scratch. It is so much easier to create one automatically.

Note:
- The gray part doesn't print; it's just there to indicate that there's something automatic happening.
- You can change how each level looks just by modifying certain styles; more on that later.
- If you make changes to the document, then right-click on the TOC and choose Update, the TOC will automatically reflect the changes in the document. Page numbers will be correct, etc.

Creating a Table of Contents: Step 1, Select and Apply Paragraph Styles

Writer knows what to put in the TOC based on what paragraph styles you tell it to look at. Paragraph styles like Heading1 etc. should be applied to the headings in the document. So plan and apply the paragraph styles that set up the structure of the document.

Paragraph styles are here; choose Format > Styles and Formatting. You can use existing ones such as Heading1 through Heading10 (recommended) or create your own.

For instance, in this document I decided that the first heading (chapter) would have Heading1 paragraph style applied;  the second level down would have Heading2 paragraph style applied, and so on. So in this illustration, the heading Types of Bread has the Heading2 style applied.

So that's what you do.

• Decide what paragraph styles you'll use on the top-level headings, the second-level headings, and so on.
• Apply those styles to the headings.

To apply a style:

• Click in the heading
• And either double-click the style name in the Styles and Formatting window, or if it's there, select it in the dropdown list on the left.

Do that to every heading in your document. This is of course less of a pain if you do it as you write the document rather than all at once afterwards.

Note: If you apply Heading1, Heading2 etc.  and don't like how they look, right-click on a heading with the style applied and choose Edit Paragraph Style.

In the window that appears, just make your changes and click OK.

Creating a Table of Contents: Step 2, Set Up the Table of Contents

Click in your document before any of the content. Then choose Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables. This window will appear.

First, check the number of levels you want to include. If you don't want all of them, change the Evaluate Up To Level setting.

Then be sure that the Outline checkbox is marked. Click the ... icon next to it.

In this window, specify the paragraph styles you selected and applied  in the previous major step, then click OK. If you used Heading1 through Heading10 it should already be set up correctly.

Then click OK in the main tab and your TOC will appear.

Creating a Table of Contents: Step 3, Modifying the Table of Contents

If you don't like how the TOC looks, modify the styles used to format the TOC. Right-click on a line in the TOC that you don't like and choose Edit Paragraph Style.

In the window that appears, change the settings, then click OK.

The TOC will reflect those changes.

To update, edit, or delete the TOC, right-click on it.

Is That All There Is?

Definitely not. See this blog for more info including how to make the TOC hotlinked. But you're well on your way.

 

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OpenOffice Template for Writer: Suppressing the Page Number on the First Page

Suppressing the page number on the first page of a document is, unfortunately, not available simply by selecting the Suppress First Page Number checkbox.

You can set up your own documents, using page styles, so that you nave no page number on the first page, but a page number on the second and subsequent pages.
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/12/merry_christmas.html

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/09/starting_page_n.html

But if you want a template already made, here are two.
No page number on first page, second page is numbered page 1

No page number on first page, second page is numbered page 2

Here's how to use them.

1. Right-click on each item to download it. Save each file to a location on your computer or a network drive you can access.

Note: You might want to just save the templates to the location already listed under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths, Templates item. Then in step 3 choose Commands > Update instead of Commands > Import.

2. Then in OpenOffice.org Writer choose File > Templates > Organize.

3. If you saved the template to one of the existing template paths, choose Commands > Update instead and continue to step 4.

If you saved the template to another location, then select a category on the left side,  click and hold down on the Commands button and choose Import as shown.

Find the files where you downloaded them. To select both, select the first, then hold down Ctrl and select the second. Click Open.

4. The templates will appear. Click Close.

5.  If you want one of the templates to be what comes up when you choose File > New > Text document, then right-click on it and choose Set as Default Template. I strongly recommend customizing the default template, whether you use this one or another one.

6.  Click Close.

7. To access the templates, choose File > New > Templates and Documents. If necessary, click the Templates icon at the left, double-click the name of the category you put the templates in in step 3, and you'll see the templates. Select the one you want.

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Things That Are Hard to Figure Out in OpenOffice Writer: Page Numbers, Different Page Orientations, Watermarks, New Document Formats, and Dragging Cells (Repost)

Another "classic" post! These are perennial questions and through reposting I'll be able to get these to come up as searchable in blog searches.

Note: Here's a related article I wrote for TechTarget.com.

I get a lot of questions when I train, and just in emails. A lot of them are about things that aren't actually hard to do but they're hard to figure out how to do in the first place. Here's how to do some of them.

Adding a Page Number to an OpenOffice.org Writer document
Note: See a related post on starting a document with no page number on the first page and page 1 on the second page.

You can do this a number of ways, but this is the quickest.

1. First, make a footer for the page number to appear in. Choose Insert > Footer > Default.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the document; you'll see the footer.
3. Click in the footer. Press Tab if you want the page number in the middle, press again if you want it at the right.
4. Type the word page if you want, followed by a space.
5. Choose Insert > Fields > Page Number.
6. Format the text in the footer the way you want it.

If you want to have no page number on the first page and start with 1 or 2 on the second page, that's a bit more advanced. Stay tuned for the blog on page styles.

(You can do the footer turn-on by choose Format > Page > Footers, too.)

Putting a Portrait Page and a Landscape Page in the Same Document

You absolutely can do this. It just takes a little while. You set up a page style that's horizontal, and one that's vertical, and then you just switch.

Here's a 2.0 document (twopagestyles.odt) that has a vertical page style and a horizontal page style. (You can set them up yourself using styles—Format > Styles and Formatting, then use the help.)

1. Type your content.
2. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.
3. Click the Page Styles icon at the top of the Styles and Formatting window.
4. Double-click the first page style you want to use, the vertical or the horizontal. (It should probably be vertical, since this page style will apply to everything above your cursor in the document.)
5. Click at the bottom of the page using that page style.
6. Choose Insert > Manual Break.
7. In the Page Style list, select the other page style, such as Horizontal.
8. Click OK.
9. Put the content on that page that you want.
10. Click at the bottom of that page.
11. Choose Insert > Manual Break.
12. In the Page Style list, select the first page style, such as Vertical.
13. Click OK. Now you're back to where you started.

Stay tuned for the blog on page styles, to create page styles yourself from scratch, and to do some gnarly pagination control.

Getting exactly what you want when you choose File > New ____ Document.

The default empty blank text document and spreadsheet are fine but you'd like the margins to be wider, or the font to be different, or for it to have certain styles. It's easy to switch out what comes up under File > New > ____ Document.

1. First, make a new document or spreadsheet. Set up the page the way you want, create or import styles, add footers and page numbers, etc.
2. Then choose File > Templates > Save.
3. Name the document, leave the category My Templates selected, and click OK.
4. Choose File > Templates > Organize.
5. Double-click the My Templates category.
6. Right-click on your template you created previously and choose Set as Default Template.
7. Click OK.

Now that document will come up when you choose File > New > _____ Document (text or spreadsheet).

To go back to the original, just repeat those steps but instead of choosing Set as Default Template, choose Reset Default Template > Text Document or Reset Default Template > Spreadsheet.

Making a Watermark

If you want a graphic or piece of text behind the content of your page, you can approach it a few different ways.

If you want a text-based watermark for your document, like CONFIDENTIAL, behind just a few pages, follow these steps. You'll  need to place the text box on every page where you want it to appear.

1. Click the “T” text icon, or if you don't see one, choose View > Toolbars > Drawing to make it appear.

2. Draw a box with the tool and type what you want inside, like CONFIDENTIAL.

3. Select the text and make it really big, maybe 66 points. You can use the font size dropdown list on the object bar for this.

4. Make the text gray if you want it lighter. Use the Font Color icon on the object bar.

5. Click somewhere else in your document, like a blank spot or some regular text.

6. If you want the text vertical or diagonal, click on the text box, right-click and choose Position and Size, click the Rotation tab, and in the Rotation field type the number of degrees. (You can also click on a point in the Default Settings region.) 55 degrees is good for a diagonal watermark.

7. Click on the text box you just drew, right-click, and choose Wrap > In Background.

8. Drag the text box to reposition it if it's not where you want, make the text larger or smaller, rotate it more or less, and make any other adjustments.

Here's an OpenOffice.org 2.0 document (watermarktemplate.odt  ) you can use with a watermark.

If you want a graphic-based watermark for just a few pages of your document, paste it into your document on each page where you want the graphic, or choose Insert  > Picture > From File. Then  do step 7 from the previous step to wrap the graphic in the background.

To make the graphic lighter, select it. The Picture toolbar should appear but if it doesn't, choose View > Toolbars > Picture. Use the Brightness icon to make the graphic lighter and use the Contrast icon to decrease contrast.

To put a graphic in the background of every page of your document (every page with the Default page style, that is, or every page with the page style you modify if you know styles), follow these steps.

1. Be sure you have the graphic, that it's light enough, and that you know where the graphic is.
2. Choose Format > Page.
3. Click the Background tab.
4. From the As dropdown list, select graphic.
5. In the Type area, be sure Position is selected.
6. Click Browse and find the graphic.
7. Click Open.

Dragging a Cell in a Spreadsheet

I get a kick out of how obscure this is. You can select two or more cells and drag them, but you can't drag just one.

Unless you do this.

1. Select the cell.
2. Click and hold down, drag the mouse down one cell, then back up one cell, and release.

Now you can drag the cell wherever you want.

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Merry Christmas! An Easier Way to Start Page Numbering at 1 on the Second Page

Note: Upon further testing, this works fine as described but the table of contents does not reflect the offset correctly. Sorry!

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I was answering comments on this blog about starting page numbering on page 2, when I mentioned the page number offset, and how it doesn't work.

And I thought, well, I haven't tested this in OpenOffice.org 2.1 yet.

Hmmm......

And then I grinned broadly as it worked exactly the way it used to.  BUT that's OK because how it functions is perfect for when you don't want a page number on page 1, and you want the second page to be page 1. (Or the third page to be page 1, etc.)

This means that if you want, and if it suits your document, you can totally skip the whole big thing with page styles simply by inserting the page number field in your footer as usual, then double-clicking the page field and typing a negative page offset.

Here's the poop.

What the Page Offset Is

When you insert a page number in a header or footer (or in your page content), you get a page number, of course. This is a FIELD, which means it's not just text, it's got intelligence built into it. The gray shading indicates it's a field.

You can double-click the page number and you get this window.

The Offset fields at the bottom right is what we're interested in here. Type in 4 and your first page number will be 5; type in -2 and your first page number will be -3.

Seems like this could be useful, yes? Well, kind of. Read on.

The Way It Works That Doesn't Do You Any Good, and the Reason I Hadn't Talked About the Offset Before

If you type 4 in the Offset field, then the first page number to appear will be 5. (It would normally be 1, so an offset of 4, 1+4, is 5.)

Here's what that looks like in the window.

Here's the effect on the first page in the document.

Here's the effect on another page in the document. So far so good.

But here's the effect on one of the last four pages  (4 is the offset) in the document. No freakin' page number at all. There's gray but nothing will actually print.

So: when you type in a positive offset, where x = your offset number, the last x pages of the document don't have a page number.

The Way It Works That Is Useful For You, and Exactly How You Can Use This for Documents With Pages You Don't Want Numbered

Positive offset isn't that usefull, but negative offset is verra nice

Let's say you have a cover page, and your content is the second page. You want no page number on the cover page and you want "1" to appear in the footer of the second page.

So you want 1 of your pages to have no page number in the footer. Your offset is therefore -1.

Here's what you do.

Insert the page field number as usual. (To add the footer, choose Insert > Footer > Default. Click in the footer text box that appears and choose Insert > Fields > Page Number.)

Double-click the inserted page number.

In the fields window, type -1 in the Offset field.

And here's the result on your first page. Look at that! It's gray,  so that means nothing will print! Which is exactly what you want!

And here's what the first page of content looks like, i.e. the second page of your document. Again, this is exactly what you want -- the number 1.

And since the numbers disappeared at the beginning of the document, not at the end, you get the correct page numbers all the way to the end of your document.

This is great. Much easier than page styles; my apologies for not bringing it to everyone's attention earlier.

If you want the page number 1 to appear on your second page, use the offset -1.
If you want the page number 1 to appear on your third page, use the offset -2.

And so on.

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Using Master Documents to Combine Spreadsheets as Well as Writer Documents

I've written an article for TechTarget.com about how to bring spreadsheets into master documents, too. You link the spreadsheet to a Writer document, then bring that "dummy" writer document into your master document. It's a hack but a practical hack since big publications often need to combine different document types. There's an approach (even hackier, but useful) for bringing in presentation content, too.

If you haven't read the first article on plain old master documents, read that first.

 

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Starting Page Numbering on Page 2, and Other Ways to Mix Page Styles in a Document

Note: See also this blog on just using the offset feature.

Note: This is a repost from December that didn't get published correctly. Also see my post that will be coming Wednesday, on an easier approach if you just want to insert some columns in a document.

All right. It's the elephant in the room, and it's time to address it.

How do you have no page number on the first page, then have the second page start with the page number 1 in the footer? Or with page number 42, or 623?

(Or how do you have a landscape page in a portrait document?)

Good question. It's a common one. It's actually not more complex than the tax code, but there's some setup you need to do that's a little more complicated than the task at hand. I would like to see a checkbox/field combination somewhere  that would let you specify "For this document, start the page footer on page __ and make the first page number be ___". However, for now, we do it this way.

There are two things to control in this situation:
- Whether there is a page number in the footer--i.e. whether there is any number at all in there, regardless of what it is.
- If there is a page number in the footer, what that page number is.

You control the first with page styles: you set up the page style, say "yes, there's a footer and a page number in it" or "no, no stinkin' page numbers here" and then apply that page style.

You control the second a few different ways. I'm going to show you the most straightforward which is just to create a page break, switch to a different page style, and specify what the page number for that page is.: 1, 42,  623, or anything else.

Let's look at part 1 first.  Page styles are actually a really nice, useful feature.

Part 1: Setting Up Page Styles

Bring up the document you're working with.  Remove any page breaks you've put in between the first and second pages. This sample  document I'm using has some text that clearly goes on a cover page, and then it runs immediately into the content text that should start on page 2.

For any of these images, just click on any of them that are too small for you to read. (They mostly all are, but you might not need to get more detail on all of them.)

Here's my sample document. I want no page number on the first page and page number 1 on the 2nd page.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. In that window, click the Page Styles icon at the top.

Right-click in the blank part and choose New. You're going to make the page styles you need.

In the Organizer tab of the page styles window, just name the style  something like Cover Page. This is the one with no footer and no page number.

You actually don't need to do anything else. But just to make sure it's clear when we're applying the styles in this procedure, I'm going to suggest that you  click the Background tab and give it the  light gray background.

Click OK.

Now, right-click in a blank part of the Styles and Formatting window again, and choose New. This time you're creating the other page style, the one for the main body where you're going to have a page number and start it at 1. Call it Main Body or something, in the Organizer tab.

Then click the Footer tab and turn it on by marking the checkbox.

That's all you really need to do, so click OK.

Part 2: Applying a Page Style, Then Switching to Another

Click in the first page of the document, where you want the Cover Page page style. In the Styles and Formatting window, double-click the Cover Page style you created. The style will be applied, as you can tell from the gray background.

The style is applied not only to that page, but to the entire document. That's what's supposed to happen at this point.

Now you're ready to switch. So click to the left of the first word where you want to switch, the first word of the next page usually. Or click to the right of the last word on the current page. Whatever works. Here I've clicked to the left of "Why".

Choose Insert > Manual Break. In the window that appears, just tell it that now you want to switch to the Main Body page style by selecting it in the list.

That second page is also really the first content page of the document, so you'd like it to be page 1. So select the page numbering checkbox and specify 1. (Or any number you want.)

Click OK.

A page break will be inserted where your cursor was, and the new page style you specified, Main Page, will be applied from that page on in the document.

Now, there's one more step. You've already created the footer for that Main Page style, but it's time to put content in it.  I.e., the page number. This is easy. Just scroll to the bottom of the first content page (the second page), type the word page and a space if you want, then choose Insert > Fields > Page Number. The page number will appear. And  you already specified that on this page where the page style switches to MainPage, the page numbering should restart at 1.  So it restarts at 1. (If you had specified page number 42 earlier, this number would be 42.)

That's All There Is To It

Just create the styles you want, apply the first style, then just switch page styles the way we did in this example.

Tips for Landscape and Portrait in the Same Document

To have a landscape page in a portrait document, just create a page style and select the Landscape option of the Page tab. So in this example, you could create a third page style, call it Landscape or Horizontal. Switch to it the way we did here with the manual break, but just don't change the page number.

Tips for Automatic Switching From One Page Style to Another

If you want to automatically switch from one page style to another, you have two options.

In the page style definition window, click the Organizer tab and find the Next Style list. You'll still need to insert manual page breaks sometimes but you won't have to switch styles as we did earlier.

In the paragraph style definition window, click the Text Flow tab and find the section in the middle dealing with creating a page break with a particular page style on the next page.

Or try using all three approaches together.

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Starting Page Numbering on Page 2, and Other Ways to Mix Page Styles in a Document

All right. It's the elephant in the room, and it's time to address it.

How do you have no page number on the first page, then have the second page start with the page number 1 in the footer? Or with page number 42, or 623?

(Or how do you have a landscape page in a portrait document?)

Good question. It's a common one. It's actually not more complex than the tax code, but there's some setup you need to do that's a little more complicated than the task at hand. I would like to see a checkbox/field combination somewhere  that would let you specify "For this document, start the page footer on page __ and make the first page number be ___". However, for now, we do it this way.

There are two things to control in this situation:
- Whether there is a page number in the footer--i.e. whether there is any number at all in there, regardless of what it is.
- If there is a page number in the footer, what that page number is.

You control the first with page styles: you set up the page style, say "yes, there's a footer and a page number in it" or "no, no stinkin' page numbers here" and then apply that page style.

You control the second a few different ways. I'm going to show you the most straightforward which is just to create a page break, switch to a different page style, and specify what the page number for that page is.: 1, 42,  623, or anything else.

Let's look at part 1 first.  Page styles are actually a really nice, useful feature.

Part 1: Setting Up Page Styles

Bring up the document you're working with.  Remove any page breaks you've put in between the first and second pages. This sample  document I'm using has some text that clearly goes on a cover page, and then it runs immediately into the content text that should start on page 2.

For any of these images, just click on any of them that are too small for you to read. (They mostly all are, but you might not need to get more detail on all of them.)

Here's my sample document. I want no page number on the first page and page number 1 on the 2nd page.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. In that window, click the Page Styles icon at the top.

Right-click in the blank part and choose New. You're going to make the page styles you need.

In the Organizer tab of the page styles window, just name the style  something like Cover Page. This is the one with no footer and no page number.

You actually don't need to do anything else. But just to make sure it's clear when we're applying the styles in this procedure, I'm going to suggest that you  click the Background tab and give it the  light gray background.

Click OK.

Now, right-click in a blank part of the Styles and Formatting window again, and choose New. This time you're creating the other page style, the one for the main body where you're going to have a page number and start it at 1. Call it Main Body or something, in the Organizer tab.

Then click the Footer tab and turn it on by marking the checkbox.

That's all you really need to do, so click OK.

Part 2: Applying a Page Style, Then Switching to Another

Click in the first page of the document, where you want the Cover Page page style. In the Styles and Formatting window, double-click the Cover Page style you created. The style will be applied, as you can tell from the gray background.

The style is applied not only to that page, but to the entire document. That's what's supposed to happen at this point.

Now you're ready to switch. So click to the left of the first word where you want to switch, the first word of the next page usually. Or click to the right of the last word on the current page. Whatever works. Here I've clicked to the left of "Why".

Choose Insert > Manual Break. In the window that appears, just tell it that now you want to switch to the Main Body page style by selecting it in the list.

That second page is also really the first content page of the document, so you'd like it to be page 1. So select the page numbering checkbox and specify 1. (Or any number you want.)

Click OK.

A page break will be inserted where your cursor was, and the new page style you specified, Main Page, will be applied from that page on in the document.

Now, there's one more step. You've already created the footer for that Main Page style, but it's time to put content in it.  I.e., the page number. This is easy. Just scroll to the bottom of the first content page (the second page), type the word page and a space if you want, then choose Insert > Fields > Page Number. The page number will appear. And  you already specified that on this page where the page style switches to MainPage, the page numbering should restart at 1.  So it restarts at 1. (If you had specified page number 42 earlier, this number would be 42.)

That's All There Is To It

Just create the styles you want, apply the first style, then just switch page styles the way we did in this example.

Tips for Landscape and Portrait in the Same Document

To have a landscape page in a portrait document, just create a page style and select the Landscape option of the Page tab. So in this example, you could create a third page style, call it Landscape or Horizontal. Switch to it the way we did here with the manual break, but just don't change the page number.

Tips for Automatic Switching From One Page Style to Another

If you want to automatically switch from one page style to another, you have two options.

In the page style definition window, click the Organizer tab and find the Next Style list. You'll still need to insert manual page breaks sometimes but you won't have to switch styles as we did earlier.

In the paragraph style definition window, click the Text Flow tab and find the section in the middle dealing with creating a page break with a particular page style on the next page.

Or try using all three approaches together.

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