OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Searching and replacing paragraph returns (carriage returns), tabs, and other special characters in OpenOffice Writer

This is a repost, but it bears repeating since it's powerful, helpful, and  not obvious.

(Originally published December 2005)

John V and Gabor at the OpenOffice.org Forum helped me find this solution.  See also this blog on bringing text files into spreadsheets.

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

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

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

Searching and Replacing, Step by Step

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click Replace to do the replacing.

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

---

How to make text wrap around a graphic (and resizing the graphic proportionately) in OpenOffice Writer

When you insert a graphic, it usually looks like this. You can't get the text on either side of it.



What do you do if you want it to look like this, though?




Or what do you do if you want to have the graphic there on the left, then you want to start typing over there on the right, to the right of the graphic?

Just follow these steps. Put your text in first, then insert the graphic. (Insert > Graphic > From File, or paste something from the Internet, or choose Tools > Gallery to drag in a graphic.)

Now.

Right-click on the graphic and choose Wrap > Page Wrap.




Now the text can wrap around it.



It doesn't look quite right, though. The words come right up to the edge of the picture. So give it some space. Right-click on the graphic and choose Picture. Click on the Wrap tab and give the picture a little space on all four sides.



Now there's more space.



Also, you might want to drag it to a different point in the document, so go ahead and do that. The wrapping will continue to work.



Finally, you might want to resize the graphic. Click on it so the green handles on the sides and corners show, then move your mouse over a corner handle and drag in to shrink it or out to enlarge it.





Hold down the Shift key while you do this, to make sure that you keep the picture proportionate and don't make it to squat or skinny.

---

---

Keyboard shortcuts for keyboard navigation, in OpenOffice Writer and Calc

I'd like to suggest that everyone check out the keyboard shortcut features under Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab. Try for Writer and for Calc. Just select the Navigate item in the left hand side and scroll through all the possibilities.

You don't need to change the keyboard shortcuts. Just check out all the possibilities.

The simplest approach to the most reliable way to have no page number on the first page in OpenOffice Writer

I've posted before about how to have no page number on the first page. I used the approach of creating the page styles you used. This time I'm just going to show you how to do it using existing page styles, which takes a little of the complexity out.

(There are two easier ways, but with those ways, you lose the formatting if you save the document in .doc Word format, then close and reopen. This one works when you save in Word format.)

First: Choose Tools > Options > Writer > Printing. Turn OFF the "Print automatically inserted blank pages" option. This inserts an even page between two odds. It shows up in print preview. Don't worry about it; just turn it off unless you are doing books.

 

Now: How to have no page number on the first page, and have the page number on the second page start with either 1, or 2.

1. Create or open your document.
2. Type the content you want on the first page. You don't have to do it all, but let's say you've got some there.
3. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

4. Click the indicated Page Styles icon, fourth from the left.

5. Double-click the First Page page style. It will be highlighted and applied to your whole document no matter how many pages you have. You can see that it's applied in the lower left corner.

6. Click at the point in your document where you want to switch to page 2.

  

7. Choose Insert > Manual Break.
8. Select Default as the style that you want to switch to, in the dropdown list.

9. If you want page 2 to have a page number other than 2, select the checkbox and type the page number such as 1 in the box.

10. Click OK. Your second page will look like this. Don't worry about the 3/3, that's related to the option that you set earlier and won't affect page numbering.

That's the basics. You now have one page style applied to the first page and a different one applied to the second page. You can modify one without changing the other.

11. Choose Insert > Footer > Default.
12. You now have a footer in the Default page style (second page and subsequent pages) where you can insert a page number. 

13. Click in the footer and choose Insert > Fields > Page Number.

14. The page number appears. Format it as desired, center it, add the word "page" in front of it, or any other changes you want. The page number doesn't appear on the first page.

 

You now have one page style applied to the first page and a different one applied to the second page, with different formatting and footer contents applied to each. 

The exciting topic of footnotes and endnotes

I realized a few weeks ago that I have rarely if ever written or blogged about footnotes. In this season of pulpy beach reads, then, let's make a 180 and talk geeky, intense, length footnotes.

Inserting a Basic Footnote

The basics are very simple.

Click where you want the number to appear, in the text.

Choose Insert > Footnote/Endnote.

To insert an automatically numbering footnote, just leave the defaults as is. Click OK.

You'll see the number in the text, and a number at the bottom of the page.

Type the footnote itself at the bottom of the page.

Now, what happens when you insert another footnote? Exactly what you might expect.

And you see the new number in the text and at the bottom, with the renumbering done automatically. Also there's less text on the page from the normal body flow since you need more space for the footnotes.

Footnotes (or endnotes) Using Special Characters Instead of Sequential Numbering

Now, let's say you want something other than plain old numbers. You can choose a special character instead; just select Special Character and click the little ... browse button. However, keep to the standard fonts, don't switch to Dingbats, since then the character won't show correctly in the document itself.

Select a character and click OK.

Then click OK again in the Insert Footnote/Endnote window.

You'll see the character in the text, and with the other footnotes at the bottom of the page. NOTE that when you select a character there is no numbering.

Endnotes

Let's talk about endnotes, now. Again, it's what you might expect. Instead of the text going to the foot of the page, it goes to the end of the document.

Select Endnote instead of Footnote.

 

The number (or character) appears in the text. NOTE THAT END NOTES AND FOOTNOTES ARE NOT CONSECUTIVE. YOU CAN HAVE ENDNOTE 1 AND FOOTNOTE 1 IN THE SAME DOCUMENT. YOU CAN CHANGE THIS IN SETUP UNDER TOOLS > FOOTNOTES AND ENDNOTES.

 

And the space to type the endnote text appears at the end of the document.

 

Changing a Footnote

To go back and change the attributes of a footnote, i.e. change it to an endnote or change the character used, right-click on the number in the text and choose Footnote/Endnote.

 

Setting up Footnotes and Endnotes

You have a huge amount of control over how the notes look and behave. Choose Tools > Footnotes/Endnotes.

 

The settings are pretty straightforward. For endnotes, see below.

 

For endnotes, the same explanations apply to a subset of the options.

Inserting Stored, Reusable Information in OpenOffice Writer: One of the Most Useful Features in OpenOffice.org

I think pretty much everyone likes to save time, and avoid painful carpal tunnel surgery. Here are the two very nice shortcut features that let you slap in a bunch of text with just a couple keystrokes.

• AutoFormat lets you create a shortcut for a piece of text like your name, your company's motto, or anything else such as special characters
• Autotext lets you put in huge amounts of text and graphics, with the formatting

Using  the Automatic Formatting to Create Handy Shortcuts

Let’s say you type the word supercalfragilisticexpealidocious a zillion times a day, or your name and title. As much as you might like to type, it's repetitive work.

Or let's say that you need to use any of the special characters like accents or Greek letters. You can insert them the long way if you want.  Choose Insert > Special Characters, scroll through, switch fonts as necessary, select what you want, and click OK. But that takes a long time.

Whatever you want to type, you can set up a shortcut for it.

To do this:

First, get the text you want to reuse ready. Like get your special character inserted in the document, or think about exactly what motto or title or name it is that you want to get into your document more quickly.

Now choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Replace tab.

1. In the left-hand Replace field type your shortcut like sig and in the right-hand field.

2. In the right-hand With field, type your name or motto or paste in the special character that you've already inserted in your document.

3. Click New.

4. 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."

5. Click OK.

6.  In your document, type the shortcut, followed by a space, and your words or special character will appear.

AutoText: Storing and Quickly Inserting Text and Graphics

Let's say you've got a signature that looks like this.

It would be nice to just insert all that instead of typing, or even copying and pasting.

1. Go to a document where you've got that text and the logo. Select it all, including the logo, and including the paragraph above and below. MAKE SURE THAT THE LITTLE ANCHOR GRAPHIC IS NOT SHOWING FOR THE GRAPHIC—I.E. DON'T CLICK ON IT.

GOOD

BAD

2. Choose Edit > Autotext.

3. In the Autotext window, select a category, then type the name and the shortcut for it. Remember this shortcut; you can use it later to quickly insert the autotext.

4. Click and hold down on the Autotext button and choose New.

5. Expand the selected category and click on the titleof the autotext. Click the Preview checkbox below the blank area at the right. The autotext will be displayed.

6. Click Close.

 

Now you're ready to insert the Autotext. Here's how.

Long way: Click in any document. Choose Edit > Autotext, select the category and the autotext to insert, and click Insert.

The autotext will appear in the document.

Short way requiring that you remember the shortcut for the item: Type the shortcut that you entered earlier when you set up the autotext item, then press F3.

Note: To determine where your autotexts are stored, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths and look at the Autotext item in the big list. Or in the AutoText window, click Paths. You can add or delete paths there.

That's all there is to it! Once you get everything set up, you might never type again. ;>

---

---

Summary

Here are some useful posts I've done lately, for a class I'm teaching.

Batch conversion of documents to PDF or HTML
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2009/08/converting-openoffice-documents-to-pdf-or-html-as-a-batch.html

Page numbering: no page number on the first page

The Pagination extension
My post on the pagination extension.

Tri-fold brochure
This is a  template for a tri-fold brochure. It uses connected frames.  Right-click on the link and choose to save it to your computer if you'd like to look at it. Start typing in the lower right of the six frames and the text will flow.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 outline level feature

Let's look at this document. It's a nicely organized multiheading document about Colorado tourism with five levels of headings, starting with ChapterTitle, then Heading2, and so on down. The Navigator window is shown here (if you haven't used it, press F5 to show it; it's great).

Outline Numbering is set up to match the intended use of each heading style. Chapter Title is the top level style, and so on. Without Outline Numbering being set up under Tools > Outline Numbering, we wouldn't have the Navigator looking the way it does. Or the table of contents (next) looking like that.

Here's the document's table of contents, feeding off those levels, and showing all five because I didn't restrict it to fewer.

But let's say you want some more power and flexibility. You want something in the TOC that's not in the headings.

For instance, here's a paragraph in the middle that's kind of important. Maybe you just want this one (the heading, not the corresponding bulleted list) in the TOC as well but you don't want to make it a big level 2 or 3 heading.

To do that, just select that paragraph, then choose Format > Paragraph. In Outline and Numbering, select the level you want that paragraph to appear at, in the table of contents. Then click OK.

Then update the table of contents, and you see that paragraph.

Three nice new features for Writer, in OpenOffice.org 3.1

I'm going to be going over the 3.1 features in the next few blogs. Here are a few that are just nice -- not groundbreaking but very nice, convenient changes that making interacting and collaborating easier. The third just makes slight annoyances go away a little more easily.

Replying to Notes
In 3.0 the notes are new and improved by being in boxes off to the side. Now you can click and hold down on the black arrow, and reply to them, too. The reply shows up immediately below the original in a contrasting color. (You need to be a different user, under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > User Data for this option to be available.)

Easier Accept/Reject of Changes
It's also easier now in Writer to accept or reject a change when you're tracking changes. Just right-click (as I like to say, when in doubt, right-click).

Remove Hyperlink
You could always remove a hyperlink by selecting the text and choosing Format > Default Formatting, or right-clicking on the selected link and choosing Default Formatting. However, this makes it more obvious. Right-click without selecting and you get Remove Hyperlink as an option, as well as Copy Hyperlink.

---

---