Doing page numbers with alternating pagination

I got this question a while ago: how do you set up a document so that the page numbers go 1, 3, 5, etc.?

You take advantage of something that some people find to be a problem but can actually be used as a simple solution for exactly this situation.

In books, the first page, page 1, is on the right; you get page 2 when you flip and start reading on the left side of the spine, and so on. Writer is set up like this.

If you have a right page, then you instead of doing normal flow have another right page, that skips the left page so you go 1 (no 2 from the left), 3, and so on.

Thus to have alternating odd pages, just set up your page to be Right Page Only. Choose Format > Page, Page Tab, and for the Format, select Only Right.

Click the Header or Footer tab and turn on the header or footer, and click OK. Insert your page number in either the header or footer by choosing Insert > Fields > Page Number.

Now, OpenOffice gives you the option to insert a blank page for that missing Left page. You don't want to, though. You want to make sure the phantom left (even) page doesn't show.

Choose Tools > Options > Writer > Print. Unmark the option to print automatically inserted blank pages. If you leave the option marked, then you'll get blank unnumbered pages between your odd pages.

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Comments

[Bertil Wennergren]

Good tip. But what was the actual original reason for wanting the page numbers to go 1, 3, 5, etc.? I'm sure there was a good reason, but I just can't imagine it now.

[Solveig]

The person who asked the question was creating training materials, and was inserting an extra page after each page post-production.

Solveig

[Tim Knox]

Great, but how do you alternate between Roman and Arabic pagination in the same document. Anybody, and I mean anybody that writes front matter for a document must be able to do this. Unfortunately someone forgot to program this capability into Oo. Conventional wisdom would say that I could just do my front matter separate from the body text and print them separately. But, I need this document in electronic form in one piece. I've searched everywhere I know to find help for this problem.