OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Having different layout and page numbering within a document

See also my post on the pagination extension.

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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How to make sure that your graphics are embedded (not linked) in your documents, especially for templates

When you add a graphic to a document, you can either plop it straight in so it's stored in the document, or you can link the graphic so that the document just points to where the graphic is stored.

It looks the same either way, but here's the thing. When you email your document to someone, or post your template in a network directory, what happens to that link pointing to the graphic?

The link points back to your directory at home\documentdrafts\2008\graphics\teamphoto.gif  or whatever the path is. And your cousin in Phoenix or the other people on your team can't get to that graphic.

So what you want to do, typically, when you're sending documents or templates to other people that those people need to work with, is to make sure that your graphics are embedded in your document.

NOTE: If you're doing large books or other documents where there are significant benefits to just linking to graphics, or if you have really big graphics of a few hundred KB or more, think hard before doing only embedded graphics. You'll have some issues, including really really big documents. Consider working with the documents only on the network so that the graphics are there on the network too and you don't have path issues. You might want to link as you work with the document, then if necessary break the links (see the last section here) or even better, make a PDF, before distributing the document.

How to Insert Graphics in Documents so They're Not Linked

When you drag a graphic from the Gallery (Tools > Gallery) into your document, it's automatically embedded. But when you choose Insert > Picture > From File, then you can choose to link or to not. If you want the graphic embedded, then don't select Link.

How to Add Graphics to the Background of Headers, Footers, or Pages So They're Not Linked

You can just click in a header or footer and choose Insert > Picture > From File. But you can also set up headers, footers, and pages with a graphic in the background.

Choose Format > Page.

Click the Header, Footer, or Background tab.

For Headers or Footers click the More.

Then you'll see this window. Select Graphic then click Browse. Find the graphic. Again, just be sure you don't click the Link checkbox which in this case is next to the Browse button.

 

How to Un-Link (Embed) Graphics When They're Already In Your Document

Let's say you've got a document chock full of linked documents and you reallllly don't want to re-insert them. It's easy to fix; just break the link and the graphics will be embedded.

Under the Edit menu, look at Links. If it's dimmed as shown, then you don't have any linked graphics and you're good.

If it's not dimmed, then choose Edit > Links. In the Edit Links window, just select the graphics listed and choose Break Link. The graphics stay, but now they're embedded and you can mail the document wherever you want or store it in another location.

(You could also select a graphic link and choose Modify to change where it's pointing to.)

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Searching and replacing for carriage returns, tabs, and other characters, using regular expressions

Call them carriage returns, line breaks, paragraph marks, whatever, sometimes you want fewer of them. Maybe you've brought in some ASCII text that had a line break or two after every paragraph and now with formatted text you don't need it. Or you're turning a spreadsheet or database into text or vice versa.

At any rate, it would be nice to use the Find and Replace window to quickly find'em and change them to whatever you want: nothing at all, or the phrase "el elegante" or whatever.

Note: If you're a macro kind of person, see this page on the ooo forum.

Searching and Replacing, Step by Step

In your OpenOffice.org document, choose Edit > Find and Replace or press Ctrl F. The Find and Replace window will appear.

In the Find and Replace window, enter the symbol for what you want to search for, in the Find field. Here's a quick reference to the symbols to enter for what you're looking for.

• Regular carriage returns  are $
• Soft returns inserted with a Shift Return, are \n
• Just an empty paragraph, i.e. a carriage return but with no text on that line, is ^$
• Tabs are \t

In the Replace field, you typically don't enter anything since you're probably just trying to get rid of whatever you're searching for.

• If you want to replace something with a carriage return, put \n in the Replace field.
• If you want to replace one carriage return with two, put \n\n in the Replace field.
• One thing--you can't replace something with soft returns. As you see, a \n in the Replace field turns into a normal hard return.
• Just use \t normally, in both the Search and the Replace fields, for a tab.

Once your Find and Replace fields contain what they should, click the More Options button. Select the Regular Expressions checkbox. This will make the program look for what those codes represent, rather than literally those characters.

If you're using a mix of regular expressions and normal characters, you might need to use a \ in front of anything you want evaluated normally. For instance, if you really are looking for the symbol $ but you want to replace it with a carriage return \n, then you need to actually search for \$ in the Search field and replace it with \n because $ is a special character.

This illustration shows you're looking for a carriage return (any carriage return), and you're going to replace it with nothing.

Click Find. The first instance (from where the cursor was) of the thing you're looking for will be highlighted.

Click Replace to do the replacing.

And so on. Keep going until you're done. Use Replace All only when you're absolutely positive you'll get the results you want.

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Selecting two or more drawing objects in an OpenOffice Writer document

I have been spending some time under Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab, looking through the features. I was looking at the Writer features for 2.4 when I came across this little item.

Gosh, I said to myself, could this be the option, very well hidden, that would let me multi-select objects in Writer?

Because, as you may have experienced, it is difficult to select two or more objects at the same time using Ctrl or Select.

Well, not quite. You still can't select two or more pictures or frames at the same time. But Ctrl + F8 does let you select two or more drawing objects at the same time. Select the first one, hold down Shift, and select the next one.

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

[Digg it]

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.

[Digg it]

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Four Table Tips for OpenOffice Writer: Blank line above a table, splitting tables, automatic optimal column width, and joining tables

Tables generally behave as you might expect. They're fairly straightforward and not too troublesome.

But sometimes the features aren't that obvious. So here's a blog on useful stuff you can't easily see, as well as one feature Word users might expect that isn't there, but for which there is a decent alternate route.

Getting a blank line / carriage return at the top of a document when the table is at the top already
Here's your table. Let's say it's, oh, top performers for Amway from each state, or the exciting new political movers and shakers from each state. And it's right at the top of the page, but you want to write an intro paragraph like "Let's welcome the new political movers and shakers from the Midwest!"

Just click in the top left cell

and press Return.

Splitting a Table
This is relatively straightforward, but there are four ways to split it. Here's your table. Note that the first line is bold and centered. The Table Heading paragraph style is applied to that row in the table.

First, click at the left of the column that you want to have as the first line of the new table.

Choose Table > Split Table.

Now you have options.

Copy Heading is just what you would expect. The results look like this.

Custom Heading Apply Style is useful only if the line you're splitting on is going to be used as a heading. Here, it's pretty silly. It applies the paragraph style from the heading of the table to the top row of the new table. Also the first row is a heading, i.e. it will repeat at the top of the next page if the table goes far enough to continue to the next page.

Custom Heading is the same except that it doesn't apply any paragraph style. But the first row of the new table will still repeat on the next page if the table goes long enough, since it's a heading.

No Heading is the simplest approach -- it splits the table and does absolutely nothing else to it.

Automatically adjusting spacing to fit the text

Let's say you've got this table. You probably want to give the far right column a little more width, definitely, and maybe adjust some of the other columns to suit how much content they have.

Select the entire table. The Table toolbar will appear. The icon you want is the Optimize icon. (The icons shown here are for Ubuntu, use your tooltips if necessary on your version of OpenOffice.org.)

Click and hold down the arrow for the Optimize icon. All of these are useful but you want the far right icon, Optimal Column Width.

And here's the result.

Joining Two Tables

Sorry, there's no quick way to do this. Tables are just normal tables in Writer, and so part of the normal text flow. You can't just join text chunks. However, it's not too much work to copy and paste.

You have a table. You then have a blank line or three, then another table. You want them to be one table.

- Copy the second table (leave out the heading rows).
- Create a blank row at the end of the first table.
- Click in the first cell of that blank row.
- Paste
- Delete the second table now that you've pasted it into the end of the first table

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Printing two-sided brochures in OpenOffice.org Writer: easy as pie, if you know a couple tricks about how to make pie

An email conversation with Don revived my interest in brochures.

I've got a template here for a tri-fold brochure. It uses connected frames.  Right-click on the link and choose to save it to your computer if you'd like to look at it.
 

However, what if you want something more normal, just something like this? You want to rotate a letter or A4 piece of paper 90 degrees, and fold it in half.

This means some juggling with the page printing order. For the folding to come out right, you need an eight-page brochure to print like this. Half are on one side of the paper and half are on the other.

You could do this through mental gyrations.  Or you can do it with the OpenOffice.org Writer brochure setting under print options.

You just need to do a few things to make it work well.

Step 1: Set up your page normally (portrait) but....

For whatever reason, the brochure printing prints a little short of filling the eight vertical inches appropriately. So for printing on letter size paper sideways, I recommend an 8 1/2 by 13 page size. Choose Format > Page, Page tab and set the size there. I also recommend mirrored setup and a nice big inner margin as shown.

Step 2: Make your content and heading fonts a little bigger  

The whole document will be shrunk when it's turned and printed so I recommend increasing all font sizes about 2 points, possibly more for extra readability.

Step 3: Print using the brochure options and print Landscape (additional details vary depending on your printer)

Choose File > Print. Click Options. Select the Brochure option. Click OK.

 

In the OpenOffice.org print window, just click Properties and find the option to print Landscape.

 

If your printer also lets you print double-sided, select that option too. And you're done.

If your printer doesn't do double-sided, you'll need to do this instead.

Print the brochure in two passes:

A) Choose File > Print and click Options. Set these options to print only half the pages:

B) In the print window, click Properties and set up the printer to print  landscape. Print.

C) Then put the pages that you've printed into the printer again, choose File > Print again, and choose these options instead to print the other half of the pages AND to reverse order.

And of course print Landscape this time too.

Here's a template if you'd like to download it and fiddle with it. Right-click on the link and choose to save it to your computer.

Download the template, with screenshots and directions.

Download the template without screenshots or directions.

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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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Putting borders around pieces of text without frames, and making your own automatically incrementing captions

Let's say you want something that looks like this. (I found the Java examples here.) You want a border around the code example and you want a caption with a number that increments automatically.

You can go ahead and put the code in a frame. Just Insert > Frame, click OK, stretch it to the right size, paste the code inside. Then click in the frame and choose Insert > Caption, and bam, you're good.

Now, I'm embarrassed to say that I don't quite remember why frames aren't always a good solution. I was working with someone who wanted boxes around code and frames weren't quite working for him. (We needed to put frames inside frames because of some formatting goals.)

However, frames can be just a little annoying to deal with because sometimes when you click on the frame you can't type in it, you have to click outside the frame and then inside it again, etc.

And why use a graphic element when there's a paragraph attribute that lets you just put a border around any paragraph? Plus, then you can save all that paragraph formatting as a style, so you can type or paste in the code example text, select it all, and just apply your CodeExample style. It's more Elegant somehow. Plus it's easier to update. (You can do frame styles but the updating process isn't nearly as cooperative as the paragraph styles.) And the automatically numbering caption that you insert with this approach is very nearly as easy to do as when you skip styles.

Here's how.

1. Get your code example in. You can copy and paste from your actual code that you've got running, or choose Insert > File to just bring it straight in without copying and pasting.

2. Format it the way you want it. Courier font, font size, indented a half inch, whatever.

3. Then select it all and choose Format > Paragraph, Border tab. Select the border icon on the left for all four sides, in the middle set border formatting options, and on the right, maybe increase the distance from the content to the border.  Click OK.

4. The code example will have a border.

5. With your mouse still selecting the code example, choose Format > Styles and Formatting. Click and hold down on the far right icon and choose New Style From Selection.

6. Give the new style a name and click OK.

You have your paragraph style for code examples now (in this document only) and can modify and reapply it easily.

7. Now to insert a caption for just some plain text, click below it and type whatever you want the caption to be, like Code Example: arrays or whatever.

8. Click where you want the code example number to appear, like between "example" and the colon.

9. Choose Insert > Fields > Other and click the Variables tab.

10. Select Number Range on the left. Now choose one of the numbering range systems set up already. Just select Drawing, Illustration, whatever you want. The word "Drawing" won't appear, they're just named differently to indicate that they're separate and increment independently. After you do, type whatever you chose, like Drawing or Illustration, followed by +1, at the bottom of the window in the Value field. Then select the numbering type on the right like Arabic, ABC, etc.

Then click Insert. The number appears. The gray indicates that the number automatically increments.

11. To make more captions, either copy and paste the results of the first one, and modify the text, or repeat those steps. The number will automatically increment. However, it won't be affected by other numbering like page or other number ranges you set up for tables or illustrations.

12. To apply the formatting to more code examples, just get the text in, select the whole piece of code, and choose Format > Styles and Formatting. Double-click the style  you created.

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How do you insert an em dash in OpenOffice Writer? and other shortcuts to make life easier

An em dash is the nice long one that you insert between thoughts.

Methods for creating them vary from one word processor to another. To create them in OpenOffice.org Writer, I recommend that you use the Autocorrect window. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect, Options tab. Select both checkboxes next to Replace Dashes. (Aside from the first option in the window, this is pretty much the only selection in the Options tab that I recommend.)

How does it work? It takes two regular hyphens that you type using the keyboard and turns'em into an em dash.

So you type this, using the - key that for me is to the right of the zero and left of the = and +.

and then you type the next word (still no change, it's still two hyphens from the keyboard)

but then when you press the spacebar, the substitution happens.

At this point you can copy and paste the em dash anywhere you want, or just keep using the -- approach.

Now, if you want to type something else, like any of these things

you'll want to use the Replacement tab of the same window. I cover that info as well as another approach to longer-text shortcuts here, but here's the basic set of steps.

1. Choose Insert > Special Characters and find the symbol you want. This can take a while since there are a zillion but scroll around, change the selections in the dropdown lists at the top, and you'll find what you want. Select it in the window and click OK.

2. The symbol will appear in your Writer document. Select it and copy it.

3. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click the Replace tab.

4. In the left field type one or more letters that are NOT a word (i.e. you won't be typing them on their own to appear as is) and in the right field paste the symbol.

5. Click New. (The New button will then change to display the word "Replace".)  The substitution will appear in the list.

6. Click OK.

7. Now in your document when you  want the symbol, type the shortcut that you specified

followed by a space. When you type the space, the substitution will happen.

If it doesn't happen, choose Tools > AutoCorrect, Options tab and be sure that the Use Replacement Table option at the top of the list is marked, with both checkboxes. If it's not, mark both checkboxes and click OK. Then type your shortcut again and a space, and the substitution will work.

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Good information on the OpenOffice.org documentation wiki about regular expressions in Calc and Writer

Calc 
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Regular_Expressions_in_Calc

Writer
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Regular_Expressions_in_Writer

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Two videos: how to use two or more page styles, with different page numbering, in an OpenOffice.org Writer document

One of the things in OpenOffice.org and StarOffice that's a little harder than it should be is having different page numbering in the same document.

For example:

- Having no page number on the first page but numbers on the second page and thereafter
- Having no page number on the first page, roman numerals on the second and third pages, and arabic numbering on the fourth page. Also having the page numbering restart at 1 on the fourth page.

I've blogged about it but a video is worth a thousand words.

How to use the built-in First Page and Default page styles to have no page number on the first page and a page number on the second and subsequent pages

How to create your own page styles, and switch from one to another, to do pretty much anything you want with page layout

Note: If you're saving in Microsoft Word .doc format, any styles you create will be renamed convert1, convert2, and so on when you save, close, and reopen the document. So follow the instructions for the second video but it's probably best to modify page styles that already exist rather than creating the new styles.  (Right-click on the page style name and choose Modify, rather than right-clicking in the white area and choosing Create).

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OpenOffice Calc and Writer Chart Users -- This Is for You

This looks pretty fantastic. New features for charting coming in OpenOffice.org 2.4.

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/new_chart_features_in_openoffice

and more here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Chart2/Features2.4

To try it out, click here for the announcement and download info.

Here's just one of the new features, quoting from this post.

Equation and Value of R² for Trend Lines

Now, it is possible to display the equation for a trend line (regression curve) next to it. The formula object can be moved around, formatted with a number format, font and graphical formatting.

Alternatively, or in addition, the correlation coefficient R² can be displayed in the formula object.

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A Plea for the New Year: Don't Use Default Tabs

What Are Default Tabs?

The default tabs are the ones that you use if you simply press the Tab key. They are marked on the ruler as small upside down Ts. Whenever you press the Tab key and your cursor is in your text, you move along the cursor as far as one more of the default tabs. The default tabs in the following illustration are every half inch on the ruler.

 

The tab key indicators in the text look like arrows when you choose View > Nonprinting Characters, as shown below.  See that there are tab markers on the ruler to show where pressing Tab takes you, and tab key indicators in the text to show where you have actually pressed Tab. You can delete them if you want to get rid of them.

Before we continue, note that the info for Rachel and Bob above starts at the 2" mark.

It’s MUCH better to specify tabs yourself, though.

Why It’s Better to Create Your Own Tabs

This is better for several reasons. One is that you can position the tab exactly where you want it, and you only have to press Tab once.

You can also easily change the position of the tabbed text just by selecting all the tabbed text, then dragging the tab mark to another location. In the illustration below, the tab has been dragged  from approximately 1 7/8 to 1 5/8, or whatever. Note where the cursor is on the ruler. (I also deleted all the extra tab indicators from the text, because I only need one.)

 

 

 

A primary reason for creating your own tabs, relating to document conversion, is that default tab settings are specific not just to the application, but to the user. Each application, like Word or Writer, might have the default tabs set to different increments, and you can set yours differently than your co-workers. If the default tabs are .25 inches apart in Word, but .5 inches apart in Writer, then your document will look a lot different when you open it in Writer.  Your document using default tabs also might look quite differently to you than to your boss. And even switching between Writer and Writer might cause problems if you've set your default tabs differently.

You can change the default tab settings in Writer under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > General. However, it’s best to set the tabs where you want them in the original document. Then when you open the document in the other text-editing application, there are no tab-related corrections to make.

Creating Your Own Tabs

Select at least part of EVERY line that should have that tab. Then click on the ruler, in Writer, and drag the tab mark that appears to wherever you want it. The tabs you create are slightly larger, as shown.

Then when you press Tab once, your cursor will go all the way to that mark, disregarding any default tabs to the left of it.

To change the tab position, again select ALL the text (at least part of every line) that has that tab marker, then click and hold down on the tab marker on the ruler, and drag it. The text will follow.

You can also define tabs by selecting the paragraph(s) that need tabs and choosing Format > Paragraph, Tabs tab.

 

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Bullets not to use in Microsoft Word

I've been doing some work with converting documents between Word and Writer, and have found that this bullet format doesn't go well between the two. The text ends up in the middle of the document, and there's no space between the bullet and the text. Steer clear of this bullet format in Word and you'll have a better conversion experience.

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Grammar checker addon for OpenOffice Writer

There isn't a built-in grammar checker. If you want to add one, here's a grammar checker extension, one of the many on the extensions page for OpenOffice.org.

Once you download it, choose Tools > Extension Manager to install it.

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Note on the font color icons in OpenOffice Writer

To apply color to text in OpenOffice.org Writer, you select the text, then click and hold down on a text color icon, find the color  you want, and click the color. (Note that right now before the color is applied, the color under the A of the font color icon is white.)

That color is applied to the text, of course. Note that now the line under the A font color icon is red, the most recently applied color. Even though no red text is selected.

Now if I select some more text and just click the font color icon, rather than having to bring up the palette and pick the color again, like before, I get the most recently applied font color (the one shown in the line under the font color icon).

Ditto with the highlighting icon and the fill icon.

That is the way it works in Word, I understand, and that's how it now works in Writer 2.3. It does NOT work this way in Calc or Impress/Draw, though I would have to assume that's coming.

I wanted to point that out because I've heard complaints about how the text color icon (or text highlight icon) used to show the color of the currently selected text, not the color that you most recently applied. One could make an argument either way, but apparently the OpenOffice PTB (powers that be) decided to switch it to match Word. I must admit that I like it the new way, myself.

So -- two things here. One, that the OpenOffice folks listened to input from users, and two, that the font colors work this way in 2.3.

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Video tutorial for creating cross-references

Video tutorial, take 2. Smaller display area. It takes a while to load, but should run fine once it gets going. (Optimization is one of the things I'm working on as I create more of these.)

It's about how to create cross-references in Writer, and what they are.

Note: The video uses the Navigator (press F5) to get around more easily to various headings being referenced. The Navigator shows you the structure of your document and the objects in it. By "structure" I mean that it shows all the text to which you have applied the paragraph styles Heading1, Heading2, and so on. More specifically, it shows whatever you have set up as the paragraph styles defining your documentBy structure under Tools > Outline Numbering. That's a whole nother topic, though a very useful one. To learn more about outline numbering and the Navigator, see these blog entries.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/10/in_praise_of_ou.html

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/06/using_the_navig.html
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/06/going_to_a_spec.html
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/06/leaving_a_trail.html

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