OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

The double-edged sword of the "Linked With" feature in heading styles, with tables of contents

When you create a table of contents, you specify which paragraph styles, applied to your headings, should show up in the table of contents.

 

No other styles except the ones you specify (in Outline Numbering, or in other ways) should be included.

So if I create a style called DontIncludeMe and apply it to some text, that text shouldn't end up in the table of contents (TOC), right?

 

You would think so. BUT here's the thing.

If other styles that you apply are Linked With styles that are set to appear in the TOC, then those styles WILL APPEAR IN THE TOC even though you didn't tell them too. Take a look at the Linked With field above, in the style formatting window.

Now, this isn't necessarily bad, just to my mind unexpected. Just be sure that you know this is how it works, then use the Linled With feature appropriately. You can choose None if you don't want the style you're creating or using to show up in the TOC unexpectedly.

Creating a hyperlinked table of contents

You can create a hyperlinked TOC in Writer that not only lets users click on an item to go to that page, but is still hyperlinked when you export the document to PDF.

1. Apply paragraph styles (Heading1, etc.) to your heading text and set up outline numbering (Tools > Outline Numbering) to specify which paragraph styles go with what level headings.

2. Choose Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables.

3. In the Index/table main tab, in the Evaluate Up To field, specify how many levels you want to see. Usually you want to see 2-3 levels.

4. Click the Entries tab. Follow the directions in the following illustration.

5. Click OK. You'll see the linked TOC.

Creating Keyboard Shortcuts in OpenOffice, including Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Styles, a GREAT Feature

One of the complaints people have when switching from any software package to another is that the keyboard shortcuts that they're used to don't work anymore.

However, in OpenOffice.org you can set your keyboard shortcuts pretty much any way you want. You can even assign shortcut keys to styles. This means that:

• You can blow through formatting quickly without using the Styles and Formatting window
• You can set up styles, put them in the default template that your users use, then just give them all quick reference guides that might look like this:

         

        Text with hanging left indent   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl F4
        Heading indented from left and right   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl F6
        Back to normal text   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl Q

Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Task

1. Create or open a document in the program where you want to apply the shortcut. You'll be able to choose that program, such as Writer, or all of OpenOffice.org, as the context in which the shortcut will work.

2. Choose Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab.

3. Select the program, such as Writer, or OpenOffice.org, at the top.

4. Use the Category and Function lists at the bottom to select the feature you want to assign a shortcut to. You have to be willing to spend some time looking but you'll eventually get a sense of where things are.

5. Find the keyboard shortcut, in the Shortcut Keys list in the top half of the window, that you want to assign. If it's already assigned to something, that's fine. Select the keyboard shortcut you want.

6. Click Modify. The shortcut will be assigned to the item.

7. If you want to remove a shortcut key from an item, select it in the Keys list and click Delete.

8. Click OK.

Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Style

You might find it easier to just use a keyboard shortcut for styles, than to double-click them in the Styles and Formatting window. (Format > Styles and Formatting.)

To use a keyboard shortcut for a style, you do pretty much the same thing.

1. Create or open a document in the program where you want to apply the shortcut. You'll be able to choose that program, such as Writer, or all of OpenOffice.org, as the context in which the shortcut will work.

2. Choose Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab.

3. Select the program, such as Writer, or OpenOffice.org, at the top.

4. In the Category list, scroll to the bottom and select Styles. Expand the + next to it and select the category of style: Paragraph, Page, etc. Then in the Function list select the specific style. Select the shortcut you want from the Shortcut Keys list and click Modify.

5. Click OK.

Remember, the style has to be in the document where you use the shortcut key, otherwise of course it won't work.

Giving the Configurations You've Made to All Users

Shortcut keys are stored here in XP:

openofficedirectory\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter (or another module) \accelerator\en-us\default.xml

If you want everyone to have the same shortcuts, you can modify that file, then copy it to other machines or user directories. This is the directory on XP; different for Vista. (Grrr.....my impression of Vista is, OK, it's pretty because it looks like Mac, but I am sure sick of the blue screen of death.)

In Vista, it's

\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org2\user\config\soffice.cfg\
modules\swriter (or other module)\accelerator\en-US\current.xml

If you're having trouble finding the location, just make a change, then search your system for files that were recently modified, or contains a word in the change you made.

Here's what it looks like.

xlink:href=".uno:StyleApply?Style:string=HangingIndent&
FamilyName:string=ParagraphStyles" accel:shift="true" accel:mod1="true"/>

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Whoohoo! An outline numbering level attribute as part of the paragraph style definition

Just got this email from the new features mailing list. It makes me very happy. Just define your styles, and you don't have to go into Outline Numbering to set which level it's used at. This also begs the question, can we finally use two or more headings at the same level? That would be huge for many reasons.

(Now all we need is to have a Restart Numbering attribute in the paragraph or numbering style definition windows (it's in the formatting window but not the equivalent style definition window) and I will be perfectly happy. Self-actualization will be just around the corner.)

 Product: Word Processing
   Type: new
   Title: Introduction of an outline level attribute for paragraphs and paragraph styles
  Posted by: [email protected]
  Affected: sw, xmloff
   TaskId: i70748
<http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=70748>
Effective from: cws outlinelevel
   CWS:
<http://eis.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS?Path=DEV300/outlinelevel>
 CWS status: ready for QA


*Flags*
-------
API/ BASIC [x]
Configuration [ ]
File format change [ ]
Help/ Guide [x]
Performance test [ ]
Translation [x]
UI relevant [x]


*Description*
-------------
Introduce a new paragraph and paragraph style attribute, named
“outline level”, to transform a normal paragraph directly and
independently from any certain list style or paragraph style into a
heading.

*Specification URL*
-------------------
http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/numbering/OutlineLevel.odt


Send feedback to [email protected]

Assigning OpenOffice or StarOffice Styles With the Keyboard

I occasionally mention, in class, that you can apply styles with the keyboard too. However, I'm a menu user by nature so I usually forget to emphasize it enough. Here are the steps for setting up styles so you can apply them with a keyboard shortcut.

1. Choose Tools > Customize.
2. Select the Keyboard tab.
3. Select the shortcut key to assign from the list of shortcut keys.
4. Select Style from the Category list.
   Scroll down to the Styles entry and click the + sign to show the style types of OOo.
5. Select the style to assign from the Function list.
6. Click OK.

Why Styles?

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Why should you use styles?

Lots and lots of reasons.

Styles Mean You Do the Formatting Once, Then Apply It Quickly Each Additional Time

Styles aren't so necessary for your short scathing memo to your intern, but anything longer and more complex will be a lot easier to format with styles.

Let's say you've got a 100-page white paper on how your company's flotsam server works. You've got these types of things in the document:

• Four levels of headings in various sizes and the same font (Arial)
• Regular body text in 12 point type and Times New Roman font
• Notes in bold, 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Warnings bold and italic 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Numbered lists with 1 at the top level, A at the 2nd level, and a special purple bullet at the third level

A cover page with no footer, introductory text that should be numbered in roman numerals, main body text with arabic numbers in the footer and the document title in the header, and two pages with big diagrams that need to be landscape (horizontal)

Do you really want to painfully do the formatting of every heading, every bulleted list, ever note and warning, every page, manually each time you have a new one?

You really don't.

With styles, you just do the formatting for each heading and each other formatted element of the document once, and then you just select the text and select the style each time you want to apply the formatting. Instead of selecting the text, clicking the Bold icon, clicking the Italic icon, selecting the font size, selecting the font, indenting the text....and so on for every freakin' individual chunk of differently formatted text.

Styles Mean You Can Update a Long Document's Formatting Easily

Let's say you wrote that 100-page white paper and formatted it manually. There's a layoff and you have a new manager who tells you that your paper needs to conform to the corporate marketing formatting standards. Which are completely different.

If you formatted it manually, you have days of work ahead of you.

If you formatted it with styles, you just need to either import a template from the corporate marketing group and be done with it. That's the best case scenario. If your marketing group isn't that organized, then you just need to update about 15 styles. That's all. When you update the styles, all the text says to itself “Oh, I'm Heading3, and Heading3 has changed. I'd better change too.”

Styles Are Required for a Lot of Essential Features in OpenOffice.org.

Do you want to create a table of contents? Do some fancy formatting in a table of contents or list? Do running headers? Do conditional formatting in a spreadsheet? You're going to need styles.

 

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OpenOffice Writer Styles Article on TechTarget.com

I've written a big  "what, why, and how" article on styles for TechTarget.com. http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1230137,00.html It starts with just how useful styles are in daily life and why they make life great, then goes into just how to apply, create, and update them.

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Summary of new features in OpenOffice.org 2.3

Here’s a summary of the features from the 2.3 new features list that I considered the most useful or important to write about. This page  http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/New_Features_2.3 about the new features is an excellent guide, as well.

General

• This is convenient for anyone who prints to multiple printers, all over the world. You can load or ignore the printer settings for your documents. This means you don’t end up accidentally printing to the printer in building 4 which is on the opposite side of the country, just because you were on a business trip there last week and that’s where you last printed your document.
  

• If your document isn’t wider than the OpenOffice.org window, then it will be centered in the window, not left-aligned.
  

• Lots of locale information was added, for locations such as Tagalog, Frisian, and Hausa.
  

Writer and Web

• The HTML editor now has a preview feature. Choose File > Preview in Web Browser and the document opens in the default browser.

• I love this feature. You know how when you get a hyperlink but then want to retype it or reformat it, but clicking on it takes you to the target of the link? No more. You can select hyperlinked text all you want; you now have to Ctrl Click to open a link. This is very nice.
  

• The notes say that there is a new compatibility option on Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > Compatibility: Do Not Justify Alignment in Lines Ending With Manual Line Break. However, I’m mentioning this because I couldn’t see it. The illustration shows the compatibility options that are there.
  

• When you open the Styles and Formatting window (Format > Styles and Formatting), you can set what kinds of styles you wanted to see: Applied, Custom, Automatic, etc. Previously, you had to reset this every time you opened a new document or re-opened OpenOffice.org. Now, thankfully, that category will stick. The setting is saved per application. However, the choice you make for Paragraph, Character, Frame, List, or Page doesn’t stick.
  
  

• When you right-click on text, you used to see Default as one of the options. Now you see Default Formatting, which is clearer. (Default Formatting is a great way to just clear out any extraneous formatting and apply the default style to the selected item.) This is a very nice feature regardless of the text; for one thing, it’s the best way to remove the hotlink from a URL.
  

• A new export filter lets you export to MediaWiki format. Choose File > Export and select MediaWiki in the file format list.

Calc

• This is a very, very smart change. By default, the print options for Calc are now set to Print Only Selected Sheets and Suppress Output of Empty Pages. If the Print Only Selected Sheets option is enabled, the Calc page preview shows only the displayed sheet and the message “There is nothing to print.” To change these options, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Calc > Print, or choose File > Print and click the Options button.
  

• Here’s another very smart change that will screw up all my documentation. :) The SUM icon on the main Calc toolbar has changed. Now you can select the range of numbers to add, click the SUM icon, and get the total in the first cell below the selected range. Phew. But if you liked it the old way, it still works that way, too.
  

• Graphics can be linked to macros. This should help with Excel compatibility.
  

• The Excel export filter now handles the cotangent functions COT, ACOT, COTH, and ACOTH.

• Calc now supports inline matrix/array constants in formulas. An inline array is surrounded by curly braces '{' and '}'. Elements can be each a number (including negatives), a logical constant (TRUE, FALSE) or a literal string. See this link for more detail. http://sc.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=features&msgNo=230

• You can now use dynamic ranges, rather than absolute ranges defined with $, in lists in Data Validity. Choose Data > Validity, and under the Criteria tab select Cell Range from the list.
  
  

• The GETPIVOTDATA function returns a result value from a DataPilot table, so it can be used in a cell formula.
  

Mail Merge, Databases, and Forms

• The infamous checkbox on the print message when you print a mail merge document, Do Not Show Warning Again, is gone. Phew! See this blog http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/10/how_to_get_the_.html for why that caused problems.
  
  

• This is nice. When you choose File > Print with a mail merge document, in the Mail Merge window, you can choose to save the document as separate documents or as one document.
  
  

• Unfortunately, in Base there is still no File > Export or File > Import feature. File > Export does appear, but it’s dimmed.

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Correcting a Small Annoyance: OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheet Cells Don't Wrap By Default, Plus Making a Spreadsheet Template

Me, I like cell contents to wrap.

This is wrapping.

This is not wrapping.

This is more not wrapping.

So, wrapping is nice.

You can make cell contents wrap by selecting one, two, five, or all the cells, then choosing Format > Cells, clicking the Alignment tab, and selecting the Wrap Text Automatically option.

But then, when you cut the contents out of a wrapped cell, those wrapping attributes aren't applied any longer. This is a small point but one I find annoying. Look at this first example, where I applied the Wrap formatting to alllll cells in the spreadsheet.

Now here I cut out the middle item, paste it to the right, and type in the empty cell. The Wrap formatting left along with the contents.

Correcting the Problem
There are a few ways to get around this. Here's one way. Just redefine the cell Default Cell Style to be wrapped.

- Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.
- Right-click on Default and choose Modify.

- In the Alignment tab, select Wrap Text Automatically.

- Click OK.

Now forever and ever, for that spreadsheet, all cells will wrap period. (You can overwrite them on a cell by cell basis if you like.)

If you want to set up allllll  new spreadsheets to be like this so you don't need to redefine the default style for every new spreadsheet, do this.

- Create a new spreadsheet.
- Define the default style as wrapping as shown in the last set of instructions. Before you click OK, set up any other formatting that you want to always be there by default. For instance, you might want the font to be different.

Or you might want the number format to be always a specific, different format.

- Click OK.

- Choose File > Templates > Save.

- Select the My Templates category (or another if you want) and name the template something obvious.

- Click OK.

- Choose File > Templates > Organize.

- In the left-hand pane, open the category you choose previously when saving the template. Find the template. Right-click on it and choose Set as Default Template.

- Click Close.

Now, when you create a new spreadsheet, it'll be based on that template you created: cells will all wrap, they'll all have the font you wanted, etc.

To go back to the regular way of creating new spreadsheets, just choose File > Templates > Organize again, right-click on the template, choose Reset Default Template > Spreadsheet.

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Important Note on OpenOffice Writer Styles

I was talking to my friend Simon the other day (who's a fabulous flight instructor and photographer in the Denver area, plus Java instructor) about what to present at LinuxWorld.

We were talking about styles and how that's something that can help people be more efficient. The conversation turned to list styles, and I mentioned that list styles and paragraph styles are totally different. List styles contain only list attributes, no text or paragraph formatting attributes. Simon's jaw dropped, he was very surprised. So I decided to make sure that was clear here.

Background
To apply, create or modify styles, choose Format > Styles and Formatting. Select the right category of style at the top: paragraph, character, frame, page, or list/bulleting.  Select text then double-click the style you want to apply.

To create or modify, just right-click on the white area and choose New, or right-click on an existing style and choose Modify.

Specifics on List Versus Paragraph Styles 

List styles, list formatting, is all about attributes of the list. Indenting of the list. Bullets or numbering of the list. Etc. You cannot control the font through the list formatting window.

And here are the attributes you can apply to paragraph styles.

To apply font formatting and list formatting to a list, using styles, you apply a paragraph style AND a list style. The following screen shot shows the paragraph style that's applied, then the list style that's applied.

This paragraph style is applied to the list.

And this list style is also applied to the list.

Now, applying two styles is a bit extra work so you can link the two styles. If there's a paragraph style that you only use with lists, then you can say, hey, whenever I apply this paragraph style, then also apply this list style.  Then you don't have to take the extra step of applying the list style; that'll happen automatically. However, remember that this happens ALL the time, so you want to do this only with a paragraph style that is ALWAYS applied to lists.

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An Always-Reliable Way of Docking the Styles and Formatting Window in OpenOffice Writer, Impress, and Calc, and the Slide Pane in Impress

You can dock the toolbars and floating windows in OpenOffice.org.

Here's the Styles and Formatting window, docked.

Here's the Styles and Formatting window,  undocked.

Usually you can take any window, drag it toward the side of your work area (or any of the four sides, technically) and when the gray dotted outline appears, release your mouse. (Then to undock, click and hold down on the blank gray area between the icons at the top, and drag back toward the middle.)

However, this doesn't always work. The docking process, that is. The gray line doesn't always show up.

Here's a key combination to dock the Styles and Formatting window that always (to my knowledge) works.

Click on the title bar of the undocked window so that it's selected. Then press Ctrl  Shift  F10

Press that key combo and the Styles and Formatting window docks immediately. Then as described above, drag the gray area between the icons back toward the middle of the work area to undock.

And -- here's the beautiful thing -- IT WORKS WITH THE SLIDE PANE IN OPENOFFICE.ORG IMPRESS, TOO!!! And that thing is really tricky to dock.

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Creating Keyboard Shortcuts in OpenOffice, including Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Styles, a GREAT Feature

One of the complaints people have when switching from any software package to another is that the keyboard shortcuts that they're used to don't work anymore.

However, in OpenOffice.org you can set your keyboard shortcuts pretty much any way you want. You can even assign shortcut keys to styles. This means that:

• You can blow through formatting quickly without using the Styles and Formatting window
• You can set up styles, put them in the default template that your users use, then just give them all quick reference guides that might look like this:

         

        Text with hanging left indent   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl F4
        Heading indented from left and right   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl F6
        Back to normal text   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl Q

Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Task

1. Create or open a document in the program where you want to apply the shortcut. You'll be able to choose that program, such as Writer, or all of OpenOffice.org, as the context in which the shortcut will work.

2. Choose Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab.

3. Select the program, such as Writer, or OpenOffice.org, at the top.

4. Use the Category and Function lists at the bottom to select the feature you want to assign a shortcut to. You have to be willing to spend some time looking but you'll eventually get a sense of where things are.

5. Find the keyboard shortcut, in the Shortcut Keys list in the top half of the window, that you want to assign. If it's already assigned to something, that's fine. Select the keyboard shortcut you want.

6. Click Modify. The shortcut will be assigned to the item.

7. If you want to remove a shortcut key from an item, select it in the Keys list and click Delete.

8. Click OK.

Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Style

You might find it easier to just use a keyboard shortcut for styles, than to double-click them in the Styles and Formatting window. (Format > Styles and Formatting.)

To use a keyboard shortcut for a style, you do pretty much the same thing.

1. Create or open a document in the program where you want to apply the shortcut. You'll be able to choose that program, such as Writer, or all of OpenOffice.org, as the context in which the shortcut will work.

2. Choose Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab.

3. Select the program, such as Writer, or OpenOffice.org, at the top.

4. In the Category list, scroll to the bottom and select Styles. Expand the + next to it and select the category of style: Paragraph, Page, etc. Then in the Function list select the specific style. Select the shortcut you want from the Shortcut Keys list and click Modify.

5. Click OK.

Remember, the style has to be in the document where you use the shortcut key, otherwise of course it won't work.

Giving the Configurations You've Made to All Users

Shortcut keys are stored here in XP:

openofficedirectory\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter (or another module) \accelerator\en-us\default.xml

If you want everyone to have the same shortcuts, you can modify that file, then copy it to other machines or user directories. This is the directory on XP; different for Vista. (Grrr.....my impression of Vista is, OK, it's pretty because it looks like Mac, but I am sure sick of the blue screen of death.)

In Vista, it's

\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org2\user\config\soffice.cfg\
modules\swriter (or other module)\accelerator\en-US\current.xml

If you're having trouble finding the location, just make a change, then search your system for files that were recently modified, or contains a word in the change you made.

Here's what it looks like.

xlink:href=".uno:StyleApply?Style:string=HangingIndent&
FamilyName:string=ParagraphStyles" accel:shift="true" accel:mod1="true"/>

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Importing Fonts Into OpenOffice.org 2.1

OpenOffice.org will just pick up whatever fonts you've got on your system. As someone who's worked with a lot of desktop publishing projects and who's mostly on Windows, I have a lot of fonts.

But let's say you don't have a lot of fonts, and you want more fonts for OpenOffice.

OpenOffice is there for you. In 2.1 there's a link from the Wizards to an installation site.

Choose File > Wizards > Install Fonts From Web.

Just follow the wizard through. Here are the windows.

Click on English and here's the text you see.

===========================

FontOOo

Version 1.6.1

FontOOo is a wizard allowing free fonts installation.

 

FontOOo is a wizard to simplify the downloading and installation of selected, high-quality fonts available on the internet.  License restrictions prevent these fonts from being directly shipped as part of OpenOffice.org but do allow end-user installation and use for no cost.   Please carefully read and follow the license for each of the fonts you install.

 

Click the button to start the wizard

Notes:

You will have to restart OpenOffice.org and the quickstarter to see your new fonts.

FontOOo only works at OpenOffice.org level and no font is installed at operating system level

 

This wizard is licensed under the terms of the LGPL, available here:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.php

Author: Laurent Godard – © 2004–2006 – [email protected]

===========================

Select available fonts. If they're dimmed, click Next and select any that are available.

I selected all these and installed them.

Selectwhat you want installed and click Next. The process will run. Restart OpenOffice.org and the quickstarter when you're done.

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TechTarget Article: Numbered and Bulleted Lists in OpenOffice Writer

I was looking through my posts and realized, hey, I hadn't posted here that I've written a fairly comprehensive article for techtarget on lists.

See also this post on how to do numbering with fields. Fields are a more reliable but more complex approach.

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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!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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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TechTarget Article: Using Master Documents in OpenOffice Writer

I've written an article for TechTarget.com about using master documents in OpenOffice.org Writer.

http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1230368,00.html

Master documents are used to combine lots of other Writer documents. They're similar to Word master files or Frame book files in that they organize your subdocuments, let you create a unified table of contents, etc.  They're a bit picky but once you've got them set up, they work quite reliably.

 

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OpenOffice Writer Styles Article on TechTarget.com

I've written a big ol' "what, why, and how" article on styles for TechTarget.com.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1230137,00.html

It starts with just how useful styles are in daily life and why they make life great, then goes into just how to apply, create, and update them.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'll be celebrating with friends in the usual tryptophan-heavy way, and also by hitting Ladies' Night at the Grizzly Rose in Denver.  I've had a few very nice lessons on the two-step and triple, and will be looking to dance now that I'm a little more confident with the country dances.  I'm hoping to find someone there who'll do a little swing, too.

Jumping to Particular Spots, and Rearranging Content, in an OpenOffice Writer Document, and Using Draw

Moving Around Easily Between Sections in the Navigator

I saw this question on LiveJournal by madscience but couldn't post an answer because of the Friends Only setting. I thought it was a good question, though, so I'll post it here.

"Is it possible to set up chapters or sections in an OpenOffice Writer document so that I can jump to them easily, like maybe with tabs or a tree like some PDFs have? I found something called "sections" in the documentation, but it doesn't sound like what I'm looking for.'

Definitely. Press F5 and you'll see the Navigator window.

You can expand the Headings option and just double-click the heading name to jump to that part of the document.

(This is only if you've used the Heading1 through Heading10 styles, or if you've used other styles for your headings and set them up at the right levels under Tools > Outline Numbering.)

You can also jump to anything listed in that window that you have set up--graphics, bookmarks (Insert > Bookmark), cross references, notes, etc.

You're right, sections aren't what you want, but if you have them you can double-click them in Navigator and go to them.

Rearranging Sections in Writer by Moving Headings in the Navigator

You can move one section of your document to an earlier or later part of the document easily in the Navigator too. Again, you need to have applied paragraph styles to your headings such as Heading1, Heading2, etc.

In the Navigator, just select the heading for the section you want to move.

Then click the Promote Chapter icon or the Demote Chapter icon as many times as needed to move the section to where you want it. In this picture, the 1950s and Bread section now comes before Romans and Bread.

Other Good Alternative Open Source Software

Another question from LiveJournal from fadedletterlost

"Alternative Software
I love alternative software, especially when it is a piece of free software that does basically the same function as a far more expensive version. What are some good alternative softwares that you have found?

MS Office alternative: OpenOffice
Photoshop?
Movie Creation Software?
First Person Shooter?

So on and so forth..."

A lot of people do stuff in Photoshop or Gimp that is easier to do in OpenOffice Draw. (File > New > Drawing.) If you're doing diagrams or anything that's not direct raster editing, do it in Draw, then export to EPS, JPG, PNG, whatever.

You do have slight raster control in Draw -- adjust RGB, make things B/W or grayscale, control contrast and lightness, etc.

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Searching and Replacing: Replacing One Style With Another, in OpenOffice

I wrote this blog about how to rename styles in your current document to match the style names in a different template or document, then import styles from that different template or document to update the definitions.

Now, that's a reasonable approach. More or less. Renaming can be useful also if you just realize, d'oh! you really should be renaming things something like Directive_Heading, Directive_Text, rather than Textfordirectives and headingtouseindirectives. It's nice to have all the styles you use together sorted together alphabetically.

But unfortunately the Nancy Drew in me is sometimes drawn more toward hacks than to regular ol' features already there in the software.

Felipe wrote to that post and said "Is there a way to search and replace styles?"

And I slapped myself on the forehead and said, "Well, yes, that feature DOES exist and that would, OK, be a perfectly reasonable way to deal with replacing one style with another."

So here's the scenario.

You have a wonderful document with great styles.

But then Bob the Annoying Boss comes along and says "You need to use THIS template with THESE styles."

If all the names of the styles were the same you could just import the styles and be done with it. BUT the styles in the template are DIFFERENT so it's not that simple.

What do you do?

Follow the instructions in this blog if you want to try that approach to rename the styles in your document to match the ones in the template.

Or just search for your style names, and replace them with the style names from the template.

Here's how to do the second one.

Step 1: Import styles from the new template

Open your document.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

Click and hold down on the far right icon and choose Load Styles.

In the next window, mark all the checkboxes and click From File.

Find the file with the styles you need to use and click Open.

That document's styles will show up in your Styles and Formatting window.

Step 2: Search for Your Styles and Replace With the New Styles

Be sure you're in your document.

Choose Edit > Find and Replace or just press Ctrl F.

In the Find and Replace window, click More Options and select only the Search for Styles item. NOTE: An alert reader, Julian, has this warning. "The option to search for styles disappears if you have specified some formatting in one of the search or replace boxes. Clicking No Format brings it back."

In the  first dropdown list, select the style in your document, and in the other dropdown list, select the style you just imported that you want to replace the existing style with.

Click Find, then Replace as appropriate. Or if you're feeling confident, click Replace All.

Repeat for each style you need to replace.

You'll see that the old styles have been replaced by the new styles. (In this illustration, the style ChapterTitle used to be applied, and it looked like the style illustrated near the top of this blog.)

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Styles Hack: Importing a Template With Completely Different Style Names, in OpenOffice Writer

NOTE: You can also search and replace for styles. Open the search and replace window, click More Options, select the Styles checkbox, and go nuts. I have blogged  more on this here. Thanks to Felipe for reminding me of this.

Maybe I should have thought of this years ago. Maybe I just hadn't thought about it all that hard. But regardless, I had a realization this morning while brushing my teeth that makes importing a new template much easier.

So. You have a grrrreat document on what makes squirrels look so cute when the sit up and eat nuts.  And you need to submit it to the Journal of Squirrel and Possum Research.

You've applied all sorts of styles from your best template. Styles like ReportHead1, ReportHead2, StrongNote, PlainNote, BodyText, ListDiamondBullets, etc.  You've got about 20 styles and about 100 pages.

And now you get the note from the JoSPR and they love your article, but they want it in their template.

No problem! you cry as you swig a celebratory jigger of apricot brandy that you keep in your desk drawer for just such occasions. You open your document, import styles, find the template, click OK, and boom......

OK, no boom, just a whimper. You get all those new styles but guess what? Nothing changed because when you import SquirrelHeading1 into a document that uses ReportHead1, nothing about ReportHead1 changes.

Agh!

Do you need to go through the whole document and apply the  JoSPR styles? Isn't the whole point, or one of the key points, of styles, is that updating them is soooooo easy?

No, and yes. IF YOU USED YOUR OWN STYLES RATHER THAN STYLES THAT CAN'T BE RENAMED LIKE HEADING1 THROUGH HEADING10 THEN IMPORTING DIFFERENTLY NAMED STYLE DEFINITIONS ISN'T THAT BAD

If you used your own styles, all you need to do is rename the styles.  And then when you import, you're golden because when you import SquirrelHeading1 (20 point, Albany font)  into a document that uses SquirrelHeading1 (18 point, AvantGarde font), then all of a sudden SquirrelHeading1 does in fact change to the new definition. And alllll text with that style applied changes, too.

Here's what you do.

Figure out if you've applied existing styles that are part of every Writer doc, like Heading1 through Heading10, or if you've applied styles you created yourself like ReportHeading1. If the former, then you do have to just import all the styles and then reapply. If the latter, then you're good. 

Renaming Styles
Use this procedure if you can rename the styles you used. If you don't know, try this procedure and you'll find out.

1. Open your document.
2. Go to the text with the first style you want to rename, like ReportHead1. Select that text.

3. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.
4. In that window, be sure the correct category, Paragraph or another, is showing. Click the appropriate icon at the top.

5. Right-click on the style  name and choose Modify.

6. In the style window, click the Organizer tab.

7. Rename the style; name it whatever is in the new template that corresponds to this style, like SquirrelHeading1.

8. Click OK.
9. Now, all the text that used to have the style ReportHead1 applied to it now has the style SquirrelHeading1 applied to it.

10. Rinse and repeat for all the other styles you need to rename.

All you need to do now is import the right definitions from the new template.

Importing Styles
1. Open your document.
2. Go to the text with the first style you want to rename, like ReportHead1. Select that text.
3. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.
4. Click and hold down on the far right icon and choose Load Styles.

5. In the window that appears, select all the checkboxes.

6. Click Find File.
7. Find the new template and click Open.
8. Now all the new style definitions have been imported and all the text should look different.

(If you used un-renameable styles, then at this point you need to go through and reapply the new styles. Sigh.)

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Restarting Numbering in OpenOffice Writer: Yes, Virginia, There Is a Way to Do This Without Manual Labor

OpenOffice Writer numbering is powerful but it lacks at least one very important feature.

(I’m not saying Word numbering doesn’t suck. I think it does. )

Now, it’s not all bad. Anyone doing a nice little shopping list like this is going to have no problem.

1. Beer

   1. Light

   2. Dark

2. Bread

   1. Rye

      1. Russian

      2. Scandinavian

   1. White

To get lists like this, just type the list, select the list, click the Numbering icon to turn numbering on, press Tab to indent each item as far as it needs to go, then select the whole list and in the Options tab select the numbering type you want at each level.

However, what do you do if you want this? AND let’s say you have about a hundred  of these and combine them in the same master document?

1. Directive on Parking

   1. Parking shall be completed by 8:30 AM each morning.

   2. Parking shall be performed in the following lots

      1. Lot A, except on Mondays

      2. Lot B

      3. Lot Q on weekends

2. Directive on After-Work Parties

   1. Parties shall follow these guidelines

      1. Parties shall last no longer than three hours

      2. Parties shall be catered for no more than $300

      3. Parties shall provide bus service home as necessary

   2. Parties shall take place no more than five times a year

When I first typed up the Directive on Parking part in OpenOffice, composing the blog before I posted it here, it actually looked like the following: the top-level numbering for the directive on parking continued from the bread list, even though it was totally separate.

Imagine a 100-page document or a 100-document book where you have to go back and fuss and curse over restarting the numbering.

The trouble with using regular ol’ numbering is multi-fold.

There Are  Problems With Trying to Do Complex Numbering in Big Projects, Especially Relating to Restarting Numbering

Restarting the numbering where and when you want it is hit and miss. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

To restart numbering, you need to click the Restart Numbering icon, or alternately use the Paragraph formatting window. Here they are.

NOTE however that this restart attribute is NOT available when you create a paragraph style.

This all means that you cannot apply restart-iness with styles. You can only apply it manually.

[I have tested the following issue moderately with 2.1 and it does not SEEM to be a problem. Test with your documents.] Also, here’s the kicker. When you import new styles, at least some of the time, the manual settings, aka the restartiness, are kablooied and you need to set them all over again.

[I have tested the following issue moderately with 2.1 and it does not SEEM to be a problem. Test with your documents.] Did I say the kicker? That was a kicker. There’s another even bigger kicker. Importing the styles also often kablooies all the indenting you did to get, say, Rye bread down to level 3 or the party rules down to the level they’re at. You can get around this by using a separate paragraph style/numbering style combination for every level but you still end up with the problem of manual restarts.

You could consider using outline numbering; however you cannot restart the numbering if you are going to combine multiple documents in a master document. Also you have only the most basic control over the distance from the number to the text. (Tools > Outline Numbering. See also http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/10/in_praise_of_ou.html )

So what the heck is the solution?

There Is A Solution If You’re Willing to Do Things Completely Differently

The solution comes from my colleague Jean Weber, at www.jeanweber.com.  She has an excellent book on Writer, including high-end complex issues like this.

Here’s the link to the OOo doc, to which she contributed. http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/

Here’s a link to her book on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/OpenOffice-org-Writer-Free-Alternative-Microsoft/dp/0596008260/sr=8-1/qid=1163013762/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0539644-5923228?ie=UTF8&s=books

Here’s a link to the file you’re going to be using to solve this problem. http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/0214WG-WorkingWithFields.pdf

What you do is, you create a numbering series of your own that has nothing to do with the normal numbering.

I’ll leave the particular details to Jean’s guide; go to the section called Defining your own numbering sequences. Here’s what you need to accomplish.

1. Create a single number range for every level. For instance, if your top level is regular Arabic, your second level is Alphabetic, and your third level is lower Roman, then create a single number range for each of those called Arabic, Alpha, and Roman (or one two and three, or Larry Moe and Curly, or whatever). Choose Insert > Fields > Other, click the Variables tab, choose Number Range on the left, and the rest is pretty clear. Jean's guide provides lots of nice detail for this.

2. Create paragraph styles with the indenting you want, one style for each level. The paragraph styles are what will take care of the indenting. You also need to set up the correct tabs since you’ll press Tab between the number range and the text.

Here are examples for levels 1, 2, and 3. In this formatting example  there’s an indent of .3 inches from the left margin of the document for all text. Also the distance from the number to the text is .3 inches.

Level 1 (plus set a .3 tab in the Tabs tab)

Level 2 (plus set a .3 tab in the Tabs tab)

Level 3 (plus set a .3 tab in the Tabs tab)

3. Start inserting the numbers, just anywhere in the document. You're going to insert them, then make shortcuts so that you can insert them more easily.

Choose Insert > Fields > Other, select your top level variable such as Arabic, specify 1 in the Value field, and click Insert.

Now   create your ArabicContinued field.  Press Return or just make a space or two. Still in the Fields window, delete the 1 from the Value field, and click Insert to insert another field of the same range. It’ll show up in the document as  2. Click Insert again if you want to prove it's working; it'll show up as 3.

DO NOT set up different variables here for the regular and the restart. They need to have the same name.

Do the same for the first item and the next item at all the levels you’re using.

4. Apply the appropriate paragraph styles to each number range you're using. If you created a paragraph style called TopLevelNumbering, apply it to all the Arabic fields (or whatever you're using at the top level). Also press Tab to insert a tab after each number.

5. If you have a lot more work to do, you want all this inserting stuff to be easier so make AutoTexts.

5.a. Select the first top-level numbering item, the Arabic one that equals 1 and the tab. (Not crucial, but as long as you're saving yourself some work, you can make the tab show up automatically, too.) Be sure the appropriate style is applied so that you can bundle the number and the correct style into one convenient autotext.

5.b. Choose Edit > AutoText. Type a name like ArabicRestart, make the shortcut something obvious like AR for ArabicRestart. Click and hold down on the Autotext button and choose New.

5.c. Repeat the steps for the next number at that level, the one that doesn’t have 1 as the value. So select the field that shows 2 in your document, choose  Edit > AutoText,  and call this one just Arabic or ArabicContinued. Make the shortcut something like A or AC.

5.d. Repeat those  steps for every level.

6. Now just keep on formatting or typing your list by inserting numbers. Type AR F3 (the shortcut plus the key that says "insert the autotext with that shortcut" to insert a numeral 1 plus a tab. Type AC F3 to insert a sequential continuous number.   

Note on inserting: You can't have the cursor immediately next to any existing text or the AutoText tool will get confused about what you want to do. There has to be at least a space between the cursor and any other text.

Alternately, if your list already exists, copy and paste the appropriate restart and continuous number variables to the appropriate spots, rather than using the shortcut keys.

In Conclusion

Is it wildly different from normal numbering? Yes. Is it complicated to set up? No more than any other complex numbering.

Does it offer much more reliability and control than other numbering in OpenOffice Writer, for complex lists? Yes, yes, oh god, yes.

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A Design Contest! Enhancing the OpenOffice.org Template Coffers

The deadline is October 31st! Still plenty of time to enter!

It's another contest! Anyone with OpenOffice.org and a dream (that's all of us, potentially) can enter.

It's the Worldlabel-sponsored OpenOffice.org Design Competition.

" The OpenOffice.org documentation project has announced a Template & Clipart Contest.

The total prize money is to the tune of $5000 sponsored by WorldLabel, which has long been a strong champion of OpenOffice.org.

The goal is to increase the trove of templates and clipart. The current collection of template samples leaves a huge gap that needs to be filled. Step up and fill that gap. Winners will also have the option of including their winning entries in the OpenOffice.org installation sets available from the site.

If you are interested, visit the Documentation Project for more information. Everyone is eligible and everyone is encouraged to participate. The contest officially starts this week and ends 31
October 2006. Winning entries will be judged by a panel of three and winners will be announced."

Enter! I'm definitely going to do it. It's fun, plus with more templates, OpenOffice.org will be even more appealing for those still with Microsoft Office.

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In Praise of Outline Numbering for OpenOffice Writer Documents

[Note: Here's a template you can use with this, see instructions at end of post.]

You don't really even need to know what this feature is to benefit from it.

For every document, be sure Outline Numbering is set up correctly. You'll get a lot of very cool automatic formatting and content for free.

Outline Numbering is the specification of the structure of your document.  It just means telling OpenOffice which paragraph styles you're using for headings.

Why bother with outline numbering? Because when you have outline numbering set up, you get so much cool stuff for free.

How do you do it and what are these fabulous free things?

Read on.

Step 1: Apply styles to all headings (but you already were, right?)

You must, and should, use paragraph styles with each heading to indicate what type of content, and what level, it is.

Just select your heading text and click in the style dropdown list...

Or choose Format > Styles and Formatting, click the Paragraph Styles icon (far left at the top), then double-click the style name.

Now the selected paragraph style is applied to the text in the selected heading.

It's easy and simple to use the paragraph styles Heading1 through Heading10 for your headings.

If you don't like how the styles look, modify them. Right-click on the style name in the Styles and Formatting window and choose Modify.

Step 2: Check that Outline Numbering is correct (it should be already)

The default structure is Heading1 down through Heading10. Choose Tools > Outline Numbering; it should look like this.

If it doesn't look like this or if you applied different paragraph styles to your headings, then just apply the correct styles to each level.  Select a level on the left, select the appropriate heading style in the dropdown list, and so on.

If you want numbering that is like this, then assign the appropriate numbering at each level.

1. Bread

[content]

1.1 Rye

[content]

Then change the Show Sublevels field; if you want a heading to show 1.1, for instance, you want to show two sublevels.

Then click OK.

Step 3:  Benefits: You get automatic tables of contents, and easy, automatically updated running headers and footers

Now, tables of contents work automatically. Choose Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables. Click OK. TOCs are set up by default based on your outline numbering, assuming it's Heading1 through Heading10.

So with no additional effort at all I get this TOC from the sample I showed earlier. The gray just means that the fields are generated automatically. When you change anything in the document, right-click on the TOC and choose Update.

You also get easy running headers and footers.  Click in a header or footer, Insert > Fields > Other, and click the Document tab. Select Chapter as the Type, Chapter Name as the Format, and the level you want. Layer 1 is the current top level heading text that you used the Heading1 paragraph style on; Layer 2 is the current second-level heading text that you used the Heading2 paragraph styel  and so on.

I inserted Layer 1 on the left and Layer 2 on the right of this footer. Click to see a larger version.  In a few pages when I've got different headings, these footers will change automatically.

See? Outline numbering, and using easy styles for all your headings, gives you a lot of great automatic stuff for  very little effort. And we love getting a lot for a little.

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Here's a template you can use so that you can have Ctrl 1 through Ctrl 9 associated with heading styles Heading1 through Heading9. Ctrl T is for text body and Ctrl W is for text body indent, also.

Download the template, then set it as your default template. Default Template means that when you choose File > New > Text Document, this template opens automatically.
1. Open it in OpenOffice. It's got some explanatory text in there, so delete that.  Also, optional, if you want to edit how the styles look, just right-click on the text for that style and choose Edit > Paragraph Style.
2. Once you're good with how the template looks, choose File > Templates > Save. Name the template and put it in My Templates category. Click OK.
3. Choose File > Templates > Organize, and in the left-hand column open the My Templates category and find that new template.
4. Right-click on it and choose Set as Default Template.
[to go back to the normal template, right-click anywhere in the left pane and choose Reset Default Template.]

Now when you choose File > New > Text Document, you've got quick keys for all the styles, and you can be really fast applying styles.

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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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Making OpenOffice.org Work the Way You Want It (Repost)

 

(Originally posted in October 2005.)

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

What's better, software that does what it thinks you want, or software that does what you tell it to?

If it's rocket-launching software, and I don't know much about rocket-launching, I guess I would let the software do what it wants. However, I know what I darn well want my office suite software to do. I know how I want it to behave. I know what features I want and I know, for instance, that I do not want it suggesting to me what word I am typing and offering to help me finish the arduous task of typing it.

OpenOffice.org has its default behavior and default settings just like any other software but is very cooperative in letting you customize those behavior and settings the way you want them. Which is refreshing. You just have to tell it how to behave.

So I've put together a list of the top  customizations I think are the most helpful and/or powerful. I make sure that everyone in my classes learns these by lunchtime, and review them afterwards. When the software behaves the way you want, that makes everything better.

(By the way, this is a little bit off topic, but I wanted to mention that the scroll graphic at the top of this blog is a drawing shape in OOo 2.0.  I'm a bit of a giggly schoolgirl when it comes to the OOo drawing tools, especially the new 2.0 features.)

1. Turn off the word completion.

I hate word completion, and it’s really easy to turn off. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Word Completion tab. Make sure the Enable Word Completion option is unmarked, and click OK.

2. Turn off any automatic formatting that you don’t want.

Would you let people live in your house who you didn’t know? Then you don’t want automatic formatting going on that you don’t understand. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Options tab. Unmark everything except the top option, Use Replacement Table. Then go back through and see if you really want anything.

(You can unmark the Use Replacement Table option too....but that table is handy, as you'll see in the next item.)

3. Use the automatic formatting to create handy shortcuts.

The same tab where you turned off word completion has a really great feature for creating shortcuts. Let’s say you type the word supercalfragilisticexpealidocious a zillion times a day, or your name and title, or anything kinda long. You can set up a shortcut for it. It's a much more reliable approach than word completion.

To do this: Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Replace tab.

A. In the left-hand field type your shortcut like sig and in the right-hand field, type the word you’re tired of typing all the time.

B. Click New, then click OK.

C. Click the Options tab and be sure that both checkboxes for the top item, Use Replacement Table, are marked. That just means "use the stuff in the Replace tab."

D.  In your document, type the shortcut, followed by a space, and your word will appear.

Note: You can also delete anything in the Replace tab that you don't want.

4. Display the icons that you want.

There are a zillion icons in OOo as with any software and you probably don’t use all of them. There’s also that dandy little result of having to click on the black arrow to get to the icons you want, while the ones you do want sit there taking up space and, quite frankly, smiling a bit smugly. So take off the ones you don’t want, leave room for the ones you do want, and add some other ones.

First step is to take off the ones you don’t want. Click on the dropdown arrow and choose Visible Buttons. Find the icons you don’t want, like double spacing, and select them. That’ll remove the checkbox by them, and that removes them from the toolbar.

Now add the icons you want. The first thing to try is to click the dropdown arrow again and choose Visible Buttons. If the icon you want is there, select it and it’ll appear.

If the icon you want isn’t there, click on the dropdown arrow again and instead of Visible Buttons, select Customize Toolbar. Find the toolbar you want to add icons to. Click Add, and in the window that appears just keep looking through the categories on the left til you find the feature you want in the list on the right. Select it and click Add.

 

Back in the customization window, you can leave the icon as is and just click OK, or change the icon by clicking and holding down on the Modify button and choosing Icon.

5. Get to know the choices under Tools > Options.

Choose Tools > Options, and you’ll see the big fat configuration window. Just as the items under Tools > Autocorrect were about default behavior, Tools > Options is about default settings, default values. Anything about the program, from icon size to language settings to where the program looks when you choose File > Open, is set here.

I suggest that you open the OpenOffice.org (or StarOffice as in this illutration) item at the top, then select Paths, and change the values for any paths you use a lot. Change the My Documents item, for instance, to change the default for where OOo tries to save documents. You’ll save a lot of time scrolling around in your Save windows.

To change the path, select it in the window, click Edit, and just point to the new location.

You might also want to expand the StarOffice Write item, select Default Fonts, and choose the ones you prefer.

When you’re done, just click OK.

You can turn off the Save for Autorecovery feature if you want--or increase the save interval
I find this feature entirely un-annoying, but you can turn it off easily if you want. Autorecovery means if OpenOffice.org crashes or you have to coldboot your machine, at least you'll have something recent to return to. If you're hypervigilant, increase the interval to every minute or 5; if you don't care about it, set it to every hour or just turn it off.

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Load/Save > General. You're looking for the Save AutoRecovery Information Every  option. Unmark it, or change the interval.

Click the thumbnail below to see a bigger image of the window.

Now OOo is more like a well-behaved pet and less likely to jump up at you, licking and biting inappropriately.

Those are not all the configuration steps you can do, by a long shot. But I like them, and students seem to like them. And they're an important set of steps in the general process of showing that OpenOffice.org does what you tell it to do.

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Top Ten Reasons to Start a Healthy New Relationship With OpenOffice.org (Repost)

(Originally posted in October 2005.)

I'm not a raving crazy open source OpenOffice fanatic. Not quite, anyway.

I do like it quite a bit, though.  I've used it for six years, about the same amount of time I've used Word and Framemaker. I've trained people on it for the last three years and have written about it for five years.

So I know about the limitations, the cool stuff, the weird stuff, and the normal stuff.

And I think it's a far better choice then Microsoft Word.

(It's not always a better choice than Framemaker, but it was never meant to be. It's far more similar to Word. See my blog on whether OpenOffice.org is a good tool for techwriters and other book publishing professionals.)

I want anyone who's frustrated with Microsoft Office, who doesn't have the money for Microsoft Office, or who just wants the features of OpenOffice.org, to understand everything the program has to offer. With Sun in charge of marketing the program, the great aspects of the program are far less well known than they should be, and so many people are out there cursing the random bulleting in Word when they could be writing documents with a program that does exactly what they ask it to. (Always refreshing.)

So here are ten reasons for anyone out there to use OpenOffice.org. They're not presented in any particular order.

Price, Price, Price

You can read all the reports from Microsoft that you want but that doesn't change the fact that OpenOffice.org is absolutely free. All updates are free. Always will be. If you personally on your own computer decide to download OpenOffice.org for free instead of buying each new version of Microsoft Office, you're spending absolutely no money. If your department switches to OpenOffice.org at work, you're spending absolutely no money.

Add Linux to the mix and you're spending maybe $100, depending on your distro.

Microsoft Office costs more. Windows costs more.

If you purchase books and training, you're spending a flat one-time amount, and it's not going to be $500 a person unless you're buying some serious one-on-one tutoring. I trained 300 people for a client in Houston over three weeks, with each person attending two day-long classes, for a total cost to my client of $15,000. That's $50 a person. That's a good price.

Document conversion can take time and money too, but that's a one-time fee, too. And with the enhancements in OpenOffice.org to the compatibility with Microsoft Office ( http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/index.html), converting your Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice.org is even easier.

And frankly, there's a bunch of learning that users need to do with each new version of Microsoft Office. That takes training money, or else users never get the training and might not learn the new version very well.

There Are More Important Things to Spend Money on the Office Suite Software

Think about the most important things in life.

Health. Love. Family. A roof over your head. Education. World peace.

The right or privileg of using office suite software you're familiar with, or even just having everyone using the same software, is not on the list. I challenge anyone out there to rank using Microsoft Office as one of the most important things in life.

Which leads one naturally to think about schools. Police stations. Libraries. City government. State government. Federal government. What do they spend money on? Some fairly important stuff. Much of the stuff from our earlier list. They pay teachers' salaries, police salaries, allocate money for healthcare, and a zillion other things. And of course, most of them use Microsoft Office. Not for free. Take all the money they spend on Microsoft Office, replace it with OpenOffice.org, and that frees up a lot of money for important things. I'm not sure how much but I don't think I'm out of line in saying hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac, OS/2 and Other Operating Systems

You're not stuck with Windows when you use OpenOffice.org. If you're happy with Windows, then you can stay with Windows. If you're all about Linux, or Mac, or OS/2, or Solaris, then OpenOffice.org works the same way on those operating systems, too. Which makes sense, since your operating system shouldn't have so much control over what software you use.

Learning a New Program Isn't as Difficult as You Might Think

Think about writing a text document.

What do you do?

You type. You make things bold. You print.

There are only so many things you can do in a text document, and there aren't that many different ways to do them. The same applies to numbers in spreadsheets. You add, you subtract, you calculate the internal rate of return.

The point is, the differences between office suites aren't all that huge. Take a look at the main text toolbar for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org.

Something else I've observed in training is that a lot of people never received training on Microsoft Office in the first place. They aren't working as efficiently or powerfully as they could with the office suite they currently use. So when you switch people to a new office suite like OpenOffice.org and give them a day or two of training, they're going to be working more efficiently with the new office suite than the old one.

OpenOffice.org Is Free, Runs on All Operating Systems, So Everyone Can Use It. No More Digital Divide

With many functions of jobhunting, schools, government, and other essential functions done using the computer, it's very important that everyone be able to complete these functions. When a government agency sends out information or requires submission of information using a Word document, that's unfair and an undue burden on someone who just needs a job or needs to pay taxes. Imagine that FEMA required that all applications for assistance had to be done in Word.

Anything that we are required to do or need to do must be doable without paying $500 for the tool. Especially when something as useful and powerful as OpenOffice.org is freely available now.

OpenOffice.org means equal opportunity. You can read Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, and create them, as well.

Small File Sizes

This seems kind of trivial, after talking about universal access to required functions. But it's something to think about. OpenOffice.org file sizes are roughly 1/10th the size of their Microsoft Office counterparts. This isn't so much an issue for your own personal computer, but think about network servers, and about email files around. Having smaller file sizes is a tremendous advantage.

Great Drawing Tools

Anyone using Illustrator, or perhaps Photoshop should take a look at OpenOffice.org Draw (File > New > Draw), especially the new 2.0 version. The prefab shapes are amazing, there are precise controls for curve points, you can export to EPS, JPG and more, you can convert any item to a curve, polygon, bitmap, or 3D, there's curved text formatting like in Photoshop...the list goes on and on. I can spend an entire weekend just fiddling happily with Draw.

Take a look at this OpenOffice.org 1.x file; it's all done from scratch within the program. Here's a thumbnail of what's in it.(And by the way, speaking of small file sizes in the previous item, the file size is 14k.)

Download bowloffruit.sxd

Solid Styles for Formatting Text and Page Layout

Styles are how you make your document do what you want it to. Styles are things like the paragraph style Heading1 which is 18 points big, Helvetica, with 12 points of space below it. Or the bulleted list style DiamondBullet that has a black diamond for the bullet character, and has three tenths of an inch from the bullet to the text. Or a page style with a footer centered at the bottom of the document half an inch from the edge, a header at the right side of the top of the document, and a left margin of an inch and a half.

Create or modify the styles you need, apply them to the text as you need, and life will be good.

OpenOffice.org doesn't randomly create new bullet or other styles and apply them to your text, it doesn't take every style you've ever created and infiltrate them into your other documents, and it doesn't get all twitchy with the formatting the way Microsoft Word does. Microsoft Word drives me up the wall. I think it's a sign of the apocalypse that something this uncontrollable is used so widely.

If you've always used Microsoft Word, take a look at OpenOffice.org. Use the styles. (Format > Styles and Formatting.) See how free of cursing and hair-pulling-out life can be.

In OpenOffice.org 2.0, a Nice Presentation Tool

The 1.x version, I must admit, was serviceable but not sexy. The 2.0 version looks a lot like Microsoft Powerpoint, has a zillion effects, and makes everything a lot easier. Check it out if you've used 1.x and been disappointed.

OpenOffice.org Doesn't Randomly Decide to Do Stuff to Your Document

You can see my blog on how to easily configure OpenOffice.org to do what you want it to do, not the default stuff by default.You control it through Tools > Autocorrect.

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Is OpenOffice the Right Tool for Techwriters and Book Production? (Repost)

   

Originally published in fall 2005.

Note: See also this article by Bruce Byfield.
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/replaceframewithwriter.html

OpenOffice.org as a Techwriter's Tool for Making Books
Let's get this out of the way up front. I use Framemaker for all my OpenOffice.org workbooks and books. It's just a better tool for books than both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word. Framemaker has conditional text, extraordinary cross-referencing and numbering tools, solid, reliable layout features, conditional text (which I use extensively), and much more.

So if you're using Framemaker now, you like it and understand it, you use a lot of cross-references, and you do books of even moderate complexity, I say to you, don't be an open source hero. Stick with Framemaker.

If you're not sure whether you need Framemaker, read on and see what you think.

If you're on Microsoft Word, the page flow, random application of styles you never created, and cross-reference truncation has got to be driving you crazy, so I invite you to read on, as well.

(If you're interested in a full workbook about these topics, see the Professional Techwriter workbook here. )

OpenOffice.org Professional Book Production Strengths

Styles rock. They have immense power for just all the things you'd expect from styles, as well as the sequence in which page styles (master pages in Frame) are used.

Styles in general. Styles are really well implemented in OpenOffice.org. You choose Format > Styles and Formatting, you pick what kind of style to create, and you go nuts. Use styles in a standard, consistent manner and you won't go wrong.

Page styles: To specify the layout such as type of headers and footers, margins, backgrounds, etc., you use page styles. You create them the same way you'd create a paragraph or character style. Page styles are pretty solid. You apply them by double-clicking the page style in the stylist, then switching from one page style to another with a manual break or one of two automatic approaches. You can also restart page numbering with all three ways.

Switching page styles: As mentioned, you can switch from one page style to another by inserting a manual break, or automatically. One way is to set up a paragraph style like Heading1 to always start at the top of a new page, with a particular page style. (Framemaker doesn't have this.)  For instance, if you always start a new section with the paragraph style Heading1 and use the page style FirstPage, then you can make that happen automatically and never think about applying page styles.

You can also set up a page style to be applied once, then automatically switch to another page style. Just as you might set up Heading1 to automatically switch to BodyText as the next paragraph style, you can set up FirstPage to automatically switch to LeftRight as the next page style.

Automatic PDF: If your department is on a budget, don't worry about purchasing high-priced copies of Adobe Distiller. You can make PDFs of your documents automatically. Just choose File > Export as PDF, name the file, and set your options.

Master documents: Master documents are the equivalent of master files and book files. They work. They're not slick and powerful, but they work. They also don't crash and corrupt the subdocuments. They're just a bit tricky; you have to do them the right way. You have to insert a Text Item component between each subdocument in order to be able to apply formatting to the subdocuments, but it's not hard to do. To create a master document, just choose File > New > Master Document and use the tools in the window to add files, TOCs, text items, etc.

Automatic captions: You can set up OpenOffice.org to automatically insert captions for all your graphics, tables, etc. They're numbered separately and you can have whatever word you want in front of the caption: Table, Object, Item, Illustration, etc. Choose Tools > Options > Writer > AutoCaption.

Tables of contents: Tables of contents are in generally pretty good. They're linked to the headings you set up in outline numbering (see Weaknesses) and tabs are included by default. I would say they're just as powerful as Frame but easier to set up. You have a lot of formatting power through styles.

Better drawing tools: It's not hard to beat the drawing tools in Framemaker, but OpenOffice.org does it by a mile. Use a frame (Insert > Frame) to group the items, or else just choose File > New > Drawing and make a separate diagram. Then copy and paste into a frame in Writer or export the drawing to a JPG or other format. If you do flow charts or diagrams, the connector line tools alone might be worth using Writer as your book production tool. (Or alternately use Draw to create diagrams that you export to GIF and import into Framemaker.)

OpenOffice.org Professional Book Production Weaknesses

Cross references: Generally, they're solid if not all that slick to implement. However, two issues. One, there's no way, as in Framemaker, to search for broken cross-references, though the cross reference does show up as an empty gray box. Sometimes it's not even an empty gray box, it looks fine. So that's a big issue.

Also, if you want to do cross-references between subdocuments in a master document, you can't select them from a list—you have to keep track of what they are and type the name of the reference in manually. AND the cross-reference doesn't show up correctly in the individual document, it's just a blank gray box. You can see it correctly only from the master document, which is read-only. Grr.

Outline numbering: Outline numbering is actually kind of a powerful tool, and not that tough to implement. Outline numbering is how you tell the program that ChapterTitle is your top-level paragraph heading style, Heading1 is the next level down, and so on. From that you get running headers and footers, automatic chapter numbering, etc. You can also have only one paragraph style at each level, so there goes the idea of having two paragraph styles, Heading1NewPage and Heading1.

Indexes: Indexes work, but they're a little weird and it takes a while to get used to how they work.

Chapter-page numbering: You can set up chapter-page numbering, such as 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, and so on. You can apply chapter-page numbering to captions. You can have the chapter number in headers and footers. (Once you've set up outline numbering.) However, you can't have it show up correctly in the table of contents for the second level heading on down. Thus, you can either forego tables of contents, forego detailed tables of contents, or forego chapter-page numbering.

Running headers and footers: Running headers are easy, once you've set up outline numbering. Just go to the header or footer and choose Insert > Fields > Other, select the Document tab, select Type column, select the Chapter item, and choose what kind of information you want to insert. “Chapter” just means section, and you can specify what level section with the Layer field in the lower right corner.

There's just one problem. The running header or footer reflects the most recent heading. If you're writing about French Bread on page 1, and have a section title about Rye Bread halfway down the page on page 2, then the running header at the top of page 2 will be French Bread. It doesn't see anything on the current page, only what has already appeared in the document. If you had a running footer on page 2, it would show Rye Bread because by then Rye Bread would have appeared in the document.

This is an issue only with heading level 2 on down, since usually your top level heading will start at the top of a new page or document so quick switches aren't an issue. Therefore you can use only running headers for your top-level heading; you can use them for any levels but only in the footer, or you can use a separate page style for every chapter and type in all your headers and footers manually. The first and second are the best options.

Variables: Let's say you're putting together a huge document for a proposal, and the value like Contractor and Price and ContractorIDNumber appear several places throughout the book. Or you're doing a book for three different products and you want to be able to easily change the product name from BadgersRUs to MarmotMania. In Framemaker and in OpenOffice.org you can create variables to handle this. However, you can't share them across documents in OpenOffice.org, even if they're part of the same master document. You can't import them from one doc to another or from one doc to all other docs in a master document. You can do that in Framemaker.

In Conclusion...

Use styles. Use page styles. Take advantage of automatic page style application/switching. Set up outline numbering. Be flexible with your formatting requirements (notably with running headers and footers, and chapter-page numbering). Be very structured with the titles of your cross-references. Don't expect Framemaker. Do some test documents.

If all that sounds good, then OpenOffice.org could be a good tool for you and your group.

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Assigning OpenOffice or StarOffice Styles With the Keyboard, and Some Handy Reformatting Keyboard Shortcuts

I occasionally mention, in class, that you can apply styles with the keyboard too. However, I'm a menu user by nature so I usually forget to emphasize it enough. Here are the steps for setting up styles so you can apply them with a keyboard shortcut. The procedure comes from the new Tips and Tricks blog from the folks creating the OpenOffice.org / StarOffice Help.

1. Select Tools - Customize from the main menu
2. Select the Keyboard tab
3. Select the shortcut key to assign from the list of shortcut keys
4. Select Style from the Category list
   Scroll right down to the Styles entry and click the + sign to show the style types of OOo
5. Select the style to assign from the Function list
6. Click Ok

I also want to include two very useful comments from that blog entry:

Two other useful shortcuts related to this are: Ctrl+0 - Apply the style "Default" to the current or to the currently selected paragraph(s) Ctrl+Shift+Space - Reset the formatting of the current selection to the style applied, i.e. remove any "hard" or manual formatting from it.

Posted by Lutz Hoeger on May 17, 2006 at 07:53 AM CEST #

Thanks, Lutz. We should have mentioned these.
I actually use Ctrl+Shift+Space very often in ill-formatted docs where direct formatting prevents changes of styles to get visible.

Posted by Frank Peters on May 17, 2006 at 09:51 AM CEST #

OpenOffice Pan-Galactic Post: Posts on Charts, PDF, Spreadsheets, Templates, Drawings, OpenOffice Training, Toolbars, and Much More

I've been having a problem that some of you might sympathize with--getting posts to show up in Technorati. So as a cheater, I've created this post that links to a bunch of posts that I don't think have been showing up. Not all of them like links to current discussions or issues, just the ones I think are  important that have been missed.

So I'm sorry this isn't new content, but perhaps somewhere in the last six months there's something useful that Technorati didn't let you see the first time around.

Templates, Writer, general setup and toolbars

• Creating and using OpenOffice templates, including converting Microsoft Word templates for use in OpenOffice
• Doing calculations in tables
• The styles posts on what they are, how to get styles from one document to another, how to create and update them, etc.
• The much-discussed topic of centering text vertically in a Writer document
• Starting page numbering on page 2 and related topics (relates to page styles)
• Tables of contents
• Searching and replacing for carriage returns (paragraph breaks), tabs, and other items, using regular expressions (regex)
• Creating your own toolbar
• Setting up OpenOffice under Tools > Options and Tools > Autocorrect. This is how to turn off word completion, stop automatic formatting, set defaults, increase icon size, and much more.

Calc spreadsheets and charts

• Calc spreadsheet data entry shortcuts
• Dragging a cell in a spreadsheet (see the end of the post)
• Charts in Calc and Writer; how to click in just the right spot and modify exactly what you want.
• Opening a CSV text file in Calc so that it opens as a spreadsheet. Useful if you export files from databases of other formats and want to create them as spreadsheets or databases in OpenOffice.
• Controlling what people can put into spreadsheets with error messages, online help for the cell, ranges of permitted data, etc.

Draw, Diagrams, Impress presentations

• Using the 3D shapes in Draw (I love this stuff)
• Using OpenOffice FontWork, which is kind of like WordArt
• Creating your own arrows and other line ends for UML diagrams and other purposes
• Using the OpenOffice Gallery to store graphics; this too is useful for UML diagrams
• Printing Impress presentation handouts

Web publishing and PDF

• What I did with the web tools, creating colors, image maps, etc. to redo my getopenoffice.org StarOffice and OpenOffice Training page
• PDF, with linked articles on PDF presentations, and using hyperlinked PDFs. That post is particularly interesting since you can generate PDFs from linked OpenOffice.org documents, and the links carry over to the PDF.
• Using the wonderful Web Wizard (that's the techtarget article, here's the blog link) for creating web sites from existing OpenOffice, Microsoft, and graphics documents. You can also use it for  PDF batch convert.

Mail merge, labels, envelopes, and databases

• The very very powerful Mail Merge Wizard.
• The less powerful but far easier Secret Mail Merge that you need to add to your toolbar.
• Creating OpenOffice.org databases from spreadsheets, text files, and your address book. Even Access databases are easy.
• A bunch of articles for TechTarget.com on creating databases from scratch in Base,  creating forms, doing reports, views and joins between tables , and all the fun new stuff in the Openoffice Base database module.
• How to do labels the regular way, and manually.

Openoffice training, change management, and general discussions

• My thoughts on training and its benefits.
• My suggestions for transitioning to OpenOffice.org, including the change management aspects.
• Why OpenDocument Format is important (parental advisory, contains references to tube tops).
• Switching to OpenOffice.org, or any open source product, means you can spend the budget leftover on something important. Education, firefighters--anything that's more important than using Microsoft Office.
• Office 2007 could be a big retraining job. Think about whether you'd rather spend money and time upgrading to Office 2007, or just time on switching to OpenOffice.

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OpenOffice Styles: What, Why, and How to Use Them

March 2006: I've had some trouble getting some of my posts to show up, so I'm reposting a couple of the ones I think are most important.

Styles are like wearing your seatbelt, eating your broccoli, and apologizing to your honey even when you think you're right. They might be a bit of a pain to make yourself do, but they will so save your butt in the long run.

This is just the lead-in to  a big multi-blog post, grouped into a few different ones.

• What are styles?
• Why should everyone absolutely use styles?
• How do you create and modify styles?

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OpenOffice Templates: Making Them, and Making New Documents Based on Them (Writer, Calc and Impress): Updated March 2006

March 2006: I've added info at the end about how to point to a directory of templates.

This is embarrassing. I have a huge blogapalooza on styles but left out templates. (Updated it yesterday a bit but still, no real thorough coverage.)

I shall remedy that immediately.

All right. Let's say you have the following:

• A bunch of styles you need to have when you create a document.
• Some canned text, like your signature or a graphic logo, that you use in a lot of documents
• Or you're just darned picky about how you want your documents ;>

You are an excellent candidate for using templates. Templates are documents that store styles, text, graphics, general formatting—whatever you want. You create a document, save it as a template in the Template Place, then point to that template when you want to create a new document using what it's got. (“Styles and canned text...that's what it's got....remember that.”)

And it really couldn't be easier.

Making a Template

Open a new document.

Put in it what you want in the template. Styles, graphics, text of every kind and variety. Whatever.

Then choose File > Templates > Save.

Specify My Templates unless you have another idea for a category.

(To create a new category, click the Organizer button, select a category in the button that appears, right-click on it and choose New. An untitled category will appear. IMMEDIATELY start typing the name of your new category. Click somewhere else in the category list when you're done typing. Click Close.)

Type the name of your template like Meeting Minutes.

Click OK.

Now you've got a template.

Using a Template

You need to create a new document using that template.

Choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

Select the Template icon on the left.

Open the category you chose like My Templates. You'll see your template.

Click Open and you'll have a new untitled document based on that template.

The Coolest Part—Making That Template Come Up When You Create Any New Document

Choosing File > New > Templates and Documents is fine but what if that's your template you use all the time? You can make it come up when you just choose File > New > [type of document] by setting it as the default template.

Choose File > Templates > Organize.

Open the category your template is in, in the left side.

Right-click on the template and choose Set as Default Template.

Click Close. You're done! Choose File > New > [type of document] and you'll see the effect.

To switch back to the normal original boring blank document, repeat the steps but this time choose Reset Default Template > [type of document]

Pointing to an Existing Directory of Templates

If you have a bunch of templates, Microsoft or OpenOffice.org, set up OpenOffice.org to know where they are. Then you can get to them as above by choosing File > New > Templates and Documents.

Converting, If You Want to Point to Microsoft Format Templates
First, if they're in Microsoft format, you need to convert them to OpenOffice format. Choose File > Wizards > Document Converter. Follow the wizard through to create a converted set of copies of the templates.

Step 1.

Step 2, then just follow the wizard as prompted.

Pointing to Templates to Use
Now, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths. Select the Templates line.

Click Edit, then click Add, and add the path to the templates you want to point to. (Click this image to see a larger version if you like.)

Click OK, and OK, and OK  again.

Now you'll see the templates when you choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

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http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

What I'm Learning This Week in OpenOffice Training in Largo, Florida

I always learn something when I teach a StarOffice or OpenOffice class. In Green River, Wyoming two weeks ago, I learned how to redock the slide pane in Impress/Draw (for some versions of the software). Click here to see the post.

I also learned that cleaning the dash on a Subaru can knock your hazards on, and they don't flash so it looks like they're your regular lights. I also learned that Green River Imports is a very fine car-fixing establishment that doesn't laugh at you when you bring in your car for something like that.

This week I'm in Largo, Florida at the City of Largo. The weather is gorgeous. I'll post pictures when I get back. I'm teaching an all-Linux set of classes this week--notable, the City of Largo completely skipped Microsoft Office. Never had it or Windows running for the city. Fabulous.

A few of the things I learned from student questions, or things that students discovered and told me about,  include:

- You can just click somewhere in a table, then choose Table > AutoFormat, to apply an autoformat--you don't need to select the whole table.

- When you're putting spacing between columns under Format > Page, Columns, or for a section too, it won't accept a space between the columns if you type the measurement. You have to use the arrows to put in the spacing.

- I should have seen this earlier but in mail merge documents, you need to specify the printer before you print. In labels or envelopes just click the Options tab and specify the printer. Or in any created document, choose File > Print Properties and select the printer. Then choose File> Print, click Yes to print a form letter, be sure the Printer radio button is selected, and click OK. Used to be, you got a chance after that window to specify the printer. Not anymore.

- The mail merge wizard in 2.0.1 now does let you do manual editing when you set up the contents and layout of the address block, so it's now less annoying.

 

- To sort a data source for mail merges, so that for instance everything prints in order by zip code, here's what you do. Choose File > Open to open the data source, the .odb file. Double-click the table you're basing the mail merge on. In the editing window, click the column you want to sort by, and click one of the sort icons, Sort Ascending or Sort Descending. Then do your mail merge. If you need to then change the sort for another mail merge, just repeat these steps.

- I've been reminded that it's not a bad idea to just export your Impress slides to PDF and run your presentation in Adobe Acrobat. (In OOo, File > Export as PDF.) For anyone looking for an OpenOffice.org Impress viewer application, PDF might be all you need. Granted, it won't run your cool effects but unless you're presenting on something where you need to demonstrate motion, you don't technically need custom animation or slide transitions.

You can of course also export to HTML and to Flash; I haven't played enough with Flash to know how the transitions come over, if at all.

- Hyperlinks transfer over to PDF!!! This did not happen in 1.x. However, in 2.0 OpenOffice.org, any hyperlink in a document such as a hyperlinked table of contents or any link period, transfers to the PDF when you choose File > Export as PDF. This is GREAT.  To create a plain old hyperlink, select some text to link and click the Hyperlink icon on the top toolbar.

- In labels, to go from one frame to another on the keyboard (or to go from one label to another, period), press Esc  Tab  Enter. Intuitive, huh? You can also choose Tools > Customize, click Keyboard, and set up a control key for it.

- Cuban food is yummy. I had a pork with black beans and rice thing the other day for lunch. However, when you carry the bag of Cuban food the wrong way, the black beans leak out of the container, out of the paper bag, and splash all over your light beige suit, when you don't have time to drive back to the hotel to change.  However,  my polyester suit from the fine folks at Target was easy to dab down and get clean with just soap and water. So that was a relief. (I mostly love Target, but will take this opportunity to plead with them to carry tall sizes in pants and jeans.)

 

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Tags: OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org, Open Office, StarOffice, StarOffice training, openoffice.org training, openoffice training, education, open source, city government, Largo

What Are Styles? An Overview of Paragraph, Page, Character, and List Styles

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Styles are recipes, or definitions, or paragraphs, of individual characters, of pages, and of lists. (Frames too but I find them less useful.)

Here are some illustrations.

 

Here are some pictures of the definition window. They look a lot like the formatting windows, but you choose Format > Styles and Formatting, then create styles from the Styles and Formatting window.

Everything starts by choosing Format > Styles and Formatting. You get the Styles and Formatting window.  Click the icon at the top for the kind of style you want: paragraph, character, etc.  Right-click in that window and choose New or Modify to get the editing window you want.

Click each thumbnail if you want a bigger view.

Paragraph style definition window:

Character style definition window:

Page style definition window:

List style definition window:

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Why Should You Use Styles?

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Why should you use styles?

Lots and lots of reasons.

Styles Mean You Do the Formatting Once, Then Apply It Quickly Each Additional Time

Styles aren't so necessary for your short scathing memo to your intern, but anything longer and more complex will be a lot easier to format with styles.

Let's say you've got a 100-page white paper on how your company's flotsam server works. You've got these types of things in the document:

• Four levels of headings in various sizes and the same font (Arial)
• Regular body text in 12 point type and Times New Roman font
• Notes in bold, 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Warnings bold and italic 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Numbered lists with 1 at the top level, A at the 2nd level, and a special purple bullet at the third level

A cover page with no footer, introductory text that should be numbered in roman numerals, main body text with arabic numbers in the footer and the document title in the header, and two pages with big diagrams that need to be landscape (horizontal)

Do you really want to painfully do the formatting of every heading, every bulleted list, ever note and warning, every page, manually each time you have a new one?

You really don't.

With styles, you just do the formatting for each heading and each other formatted element of the document once, and then you just select the text and select the style each time you want to apply the formatting. Instead of selecting the text, clicking the Bold icon, clicking the Italic icon, selecting the font size, selecting the font, indenting the text....and so on for every freakin' individual chunk of differently formatted text.

Styles Mean You Can Update a Long Document's Formatting Easily

Let's say you wrote that 100-page white paper and formatted it manually. There's a layoff and you have a new manager who tells you that your paper needs to conform to the corporate marketing formatting standards. Which are completely different.

If you formatted it manually, you have days of work ahead of you.

If you formatted it with styles, you just need to either import a template from the corporate marketing group and be done with it. That's the best case scenario. If your marketing group isn't that organized, then you just need to update about 15 styles. That's all. When you update the styles, all the text says to itself “Oh, I'm Heading3, and Heading3 has changed. I'd better change too.”

Styles Are Required for a Lot of Essential Features in OpenOffice.org.

Do you want to create a table of contents? Do some fancy formatting in a table of contents or list? Do running headers? Do conditional formatting in a spreadsheet? You're going to need styles.

 

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Why Should You Use Styles?

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Why should you use styles?

Lots and lots of reasons.

Styles Mean You Do the Formatting Once, Then Apply It Quickly Each Additional Time

Styles aren't so necessary for your short scathing memo to your intern, but anything longer and more complex will be a lot easier to format with styles.

Let's say you've got a 100-page white paper on how your company's flotsam server works. You've got these types of things in the document:

• Four levels of headings in various sizes and the same font (Arial)
• Regular body text in 12 point type and Times New Roman font
• Notes in bold, 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Warnings bold and italic 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Numbered lists with 1 at the top level, A at the 2nd level, and a special purple bullet at the third level

A cover page with no footer, introductory text that should be numbered in roman numerals, main body text with arabic numbers in the footer and the document title in the header, and two pages with big diagrams that need to be landscape (horizontal)

Do you really want to painfully do the formatting of every heading, every bulleted list, ever note and warning, every page, manually each time you have a new one?

You really don't.

With styles, you just do the formatting for each heading and each other formatted element of the document once, and then you just select the text and select the style each time you want to apply the formatting. Instead of selecting the text, clicking the Bold icon, clicking the Italic icon, selecting the font size, selecting the font, indenting the text....and so on for every freakin' individual chunk of differently formatted text.

Styles Mean You Can Update a Long Document's Formatting Easily

Let's say you wrote that 100-page white paper and formatted it manually. There's a layoff and you have a new manager who tells you that your paper needs to conform to the corporate marketing formatting standards. Which are completely different.

If you formatted it manually, you have days of work ahead of you.

If you formatted it with styles, you just need to either import a template from the corporate marketing group and be done with it. That's the best case scenario. If your marketing group isn't that organized, then you just need to update about 15 styles. That's all. When you update the styles, all the text says to itself “Oh, I'm Heading3, and Heading3 has changed. I'd better change too.”

Styles Are Required for a Lot of Essential Features in OpenOffice.org.

Do you want to create a table of contents? Do some fancy formatting in a table of contents or list? Do running headers? Do conditional formatting in a spreadsheet? You're going to need styles.

 

What Are Styles? An Overview of Paragraph, Page, Character, and List Styles

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Styles are recipes, or definitions, or paragraphs, of individual characters, of pages, and of lists. (Frames too but I find them less useful.)

Here are some illustrations.

 

Here are some pictures of the definition window. They look a lot like the formatting windows, but you choose Format > Styles and Formatting, then create styles from the Styles and Formatting window.

Everything starts by choosing Format > Styles and Formatting. You get the Styles and Formatting window.  Click the icon at the top for the kind of style you want: paragraph, character, etc.  Right-click in that window and choose New or Modify to get the editing window you want.

Click each thumbnail if you want a bigger view.

Paragraph style definition window:

Character style definition window:

Page style definition window:

List style definition window:

Applying, Modifying, and Creating Styles in Writer

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.
Note: Reader Michael gives this excellent tip: "To apply the Heading1 style, you can use the "Control+1" combination. Heading2 and 3 work the same way."

Note: See also a blog on a related topic, templates.

How do you create styles? Or edit them, or apply them?

Basically, you create styles by choosing Format > Styles and Formatting. Then right-click in the empty part of that Styles and Formatting window and choose New. (Or select an existing style, right-click on it, and choose Edit.) Then make your formatting choices and click OK.

To apply a style, just select the character (or word), the paragraph (just click in it), the list, or the page, and double-click the style.

But you probably wanted a little more detail. I'm going to show how to modify a paragraph style, and create a page style. The principles are the same for all types of styles, however,

 

Applying a Style

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. The Styles and Formatting window will appear.

Click the icon for Paragraph, Character, Page, or List styles, depending on what kind of style you want to apply.

Select the text or page in your document you want to apply the style to.

Double-click the style in the Styles and Formatting window.

Tip: The Styles dropdown list shows all the applied paragraph styles in your document. You can apply a paragraph style by selecting text, then selecting the style you want from that list.

Note: To switch from one page style to another, see this post.

 

You basically just click at the bottom of one page, choose Insert > Manual Break, in the list in the window that appears select the page style you want for the next page, and click OK.

 

Modifying a Page Style

Let's say you use the Heading1 style a lot but it's not what you want. Here's the Heading 1 style in the Styles and Formatting window, and what it looks like by default before you modify it.

It's nice but you want to punch it up.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

In the Styles and Formatting window, right-click on the Heading 1  and choose Modify.

Click the Font tab and choose another font.

Click the other tabs and make changes that you want.

Click OK.

All the text where Heading 1 style is applied will be updated with the changes you made.

Creating a Page Style

You need to create a new page style for the document you're writing.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

Click the Page Styles icon at the top.

Right-click in an empty part and choose New.

In the Organizer tab, name the style.

In the Page tab, specify margins and any other important information.

In the Footer tab, if you want a footer, mark the checkbox.

Make any other selections in other tabs.

Click OK.

Click in the page where you want the page style and double-click the page style in the Styles and Formatting window.

If you need to add footer or header content, do it now. Scroll to the header or footer and type or insert the content. To add a page number to a footer, for instance, click in the footer and choose Insert > Fields > Page Number. (Be sure text  boundaries are showing; choose View > Text Boundaries.)

Getting Styles From One Document to Another

Let's say that you've got styles in one document, document A. You love your styles, they're working' for you. That's great. Now you've got document B that needs to have those styles too. What do you do?

One option is to paste the contents of document B into document A. You can just paste, or Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text to make things unstyled. Then apply styles to the text you just pasted in.

A variation on that is to create a template from the document where you have your styles, then paste document B into that new template. Take document A, choose File > Templates > Save, put it in My Templates, call it My Styles Template, and click OK.
Then choose File > New > Templates and Documents, select the Templates icon on the left, open your My Templates category, and open My Styles Template. Then repeat the steps from the previous option to paste the contents of document B into that new empty template based on document A.

You can also load the styles from document A into document B.  To load styles in 2.x into a specific document, go to document B, where you need to bring your styles. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. Find the far-right top icon with the black downward-pointing triangle, click on it, and choose Load Styles.

In the styles window that appears, mark all the types of styles you want to bring in from your template, and select Overwrite. Then click From File, select your document A file, and click Open.

Those document A styles are now in document B. Just apply the newly loaded styles as necessary. If there are different style names in B than you want used, you need to apply your A styles. If the names are the same and you just want the A definitions used, then you're done.

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Tags

OpenOffice.org  open office  OpenOffice.org training  open office training  open source  open source training  Office 12  Linux  Ubuntu  education  templates    styles  

All About Styles in OpenOffice.org Writer

Styles are like wearing your seatbelt, eating your broccoli, and apologizing to your honey even when you think you're right. They might be a bit of a pain to make yourself do, but they will so save your butt in the long run.

This is going to be a big ol' post, grouped into a few different ones.

• What are styles?
• Why should everyone absolutely use styles?
• How do you create and modify styles?

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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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