Put borders around text
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Put borders around text
This is probably a dumb question, but I'm new to Open Office and I can't do something as simple as putting a border (or frame) around a piece of text. I like to type my headings for documents, then select the text I have written and put a border around it. But for the life of me I cannot find any way of doing this. It is very simple in MS Word, and I thought I'd found the toolbar that contains the icon in Open Office Writer, but it doesn't highlight itself meaning I cannot click on it. Can anyone help?
OOo 3.0.X on Ms Windows XP
Re: Put borders around text
Hi and welcome to the forums.
To do it with direct formatting highlight the text, right-click it and select Paragraph... > Borders Tab.
(Actually the best way is to use Styles. For me, Styles are a major part of what makes OOo as flexible and powerful as it is. Styles do represent a bit of a learning curve, buit they are worth it.)
If this has answered your question please go to your first post and use the Edit button, and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can use the green tick icon at the same time if you like.
To do it with direct formatting highlight the text, right-click it and select Paragraph... > Borders Tab.
(Actually the best way is to use Styles. For me, Styles are a major part of what makes OOo as flexible and powerful as it is. Styles do represent a bit of a learning curve, buit they are worth it.)
If this has answered your question please go to your first post and use the Edit button, and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can use the green tick icon at the same time if you like.
Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, LibreOffice Version: 4.3.3.2
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Gurkha Welfare Trust
Re: Put borders around text
Great answer: 'Go to Styles.' That's about like saying, "Use Openoffice."
Then what?
Then what?
OpenOffice.org 4.1.2 Windows 10
Re: Put borders around text
A good introduction to using OpenOffice (and styles) is given at
Writer for students (several languages)
Writer for students (several languages)
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
- Hagar Delest
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- Location: France
Re: Put borders around text
Then check the help files maybe?rayroshi wrote:Great answer: 'Go to Styles.' That's about like saying, "Use Openoffice."
Then what?
There is no point copying and pasting the section about styles in each post. If the OP is interested, then he can look for styles and see if it suits his needs or not (for very short documents, styles are not necessarily a must have).
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
Re: Put borders around text
I don't think you can do it like you can in Word. Whole paragraphs are easy - format menu/paragraph/borders.
But for a bit of text which isn't a paragraph you can't easily do it - you can do a background color but not a border.
you can use a drawing object:
open the drawing object toolbar and insert a text object and set the border.
or a form control label
(not very good as there seems to be a problem with these redrawing in OO in my experience)
or a text frame
(Insert menu/frame)
These are all very time consuming by comparison.
But for a bit of text which isn't a paragraph you can't easily do it - you can do a background color but not a border.
you can use a drawing object:
open the drawing object toolbar and insert a text object and set the border.
or a form control label
(not very good as there seems to be a problem with these redrawing in OO in my experience)
or a text frame
(Insert menu/frame)
These are all very time consuming by comparison.
Last edited by JeJe on Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Windows 10, Openoffice 4.1.11, LibreOffice 7.4.0.3 (x64)
Re: Put borders around text
Thinking about it probably drawing a rectangle round the text from the drawing toolbar with the area fill set to none might be easier than my earlier suggestions.
Windows 10, Openoffice 4.1.11, LibreOffice 7.4.0.3 (x64)
- Hagar Delest
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Re: Put borders around text
Good catch!
No one thought about borders around words and not paragraphs...
No one thought about borders around words and not paragraphs...
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
Re: Put borders around text
The original statement was " type my headings for documents, then select the text I have written and put a border around it."
That suggests to me that the heading is a single line paragraph, in which case the borders tab is appropriate.
That suggests to me that the heading is a single line paragraph, in which case the borders tab is appropriate.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
Re: Put borders around text
Format/paragraph/border puts a border round the whole paragraph i.e. to the margins of the page minus the paragraph's indents.
If that's not what you want but just a border round the paragraph text itself, it might be easier to use a text frame.
(you could use the Indents and spacing tab to increase the After text space till just the text is surrounded - this will be very fiddly though. )
If that's not what you want but just a border round the paragraph text itself, it might be easier to use a text frame.
(you could use the Indents and spacing tab to increase the After text space till just the text is surrounded - this will be very fiddly though. )
Windows 10, Openoffice 4.1.11, LibreOffice 7.4.0.3 (x64)
Re: Put borders around text
Before I switched to OOo, I also put borders around some text in Word 2000. One of the first things I noticed after switching to OOo was that those borders were missing. I just checked an old .doc file created using Word 2000 and the borders are still missing in AOO, but they do appear in LO. The character and character style dialogs in AOO have no border options, but the border options do appear in the character and character style dialogs in LO.
AOO 4.1.14 on Ubuntu MATE 22.04
- Hagar Delest
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Re: Put borders around text
It depends on how you understand "piece of text" (first sentence)...RoryOF wrote:The original statement was " type my headings for documents, then select the text I have written and put a border around it."
That suggests to me that the heading is a single line paragraph, in which case the borders tab is appropriate.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
Re: Put borders around text
Bill's right... that's another one for LibreOffice... its *almost* making me want to switch.
I wrote a macro a while ago (in the attached document) to convert some text to a drawing text shape with a border (and back) in OO.
I wrote a macro a while ago (in the attached document) to convert some text to a drawing text shape with a border (and back) in OO.
- Attachments
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- text to drawing.odt
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Windows 10, Openoffice 4.1.11, LibreOffice 7.4.0.3 (x64)