[Solved] First page on right

[dohaco]

I have been writing a genealogy book, and it has several Chapters. Each Chapter (document) has a Title page, a Page Break, then followed by the remaining pages. Page numbers appear in the Footer, but not the Title page.
When I view the first (Title) page of a Chapter, it appears on the left of the two page screen. I've recently become aware that the Title page #1, (and 3,5,etc) should appear on the right, and even pages to the left, to become a legitimate printable book via PDF.

How do I get the pages to view correctly; and the File > Page Review correctly? Do I enter a blank page in front of he Title page? And how? Or something else?

[RoryOF]

Modify your main Title page style by selecting "Right" in the Layout settings on its Page tab.

[John_Ha]

As a relatively new poster, and well worth investing some time before you go too far doing things incorrectly, read the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials, the up to date Writer guide and the Writer Manual, especially the chapters on Styles. May I suggest you bookmark these pages.

Understand the difference between Left and Right pages, and Mirrored pages, and why Writer may automatically insert a blank (say Right)page between consecutive Left pages. Either read the tutorials on page numbering or search the forum for countless posts on numbering pages, and changing headers and footers.

[dohaco]

Thanks, RoryOf, My pages are now correctly even/left and odd/right on the screen. But when I went to File > Page Preview, I found the odd pages on the left, and the even on the right, as before. Is this correct or do I have a further glitch? I was expecting a 'blank page' on the left.

And John_Ha, I am taking your advice and am going to pause my 'book' for now, before I paint myself into a corner. I'm reading the Writer Tutorials as you suggested.

[RoryOF]

Without hands on of your file, and exact knowledge of what you wish (our tastes may differ from your) it is difficult to say. On the Organiser tab of your Right page the next style possibly should be Default.

Note that there are two double-page views. The centre icon of the three on the right of OO's Status bar will show two pages (or more if the scale is reduced); the pages will be displayed as odd | even, starting at the beginning of the book. If you use the righthand icon, which shows a book-ope, the odd page should be to the right; to confirm this, go to the start of the book, and the first page should be shown alone and to the right.

If you are printing duplex, you may have to enable /Tools /Options /OpenOffice Writer /Print and check "Print automatically inserted blank pages"

[RoryOF]

Just keep writing the book, even in one long stream; get it done. The formatting is secondary and can be put in place very quickly.

[John_Ha]

And John_Ha, I am taking your advice and am going to pause my 'book' for now, before I paint myself into a corner. I'm reading the Writer Tutorials as you suggested.

You will find a 10x or 100x benefit - an hour reading now will save you 10 or 100 hours later.

Just keep writing the book, even in one long stream; get it done. The formatting is secondary and can be put in place very quickly.

Absolutely 110% true.

Give me (or indeed give Rory) a Notepad .TXT file of a 200 page book and I (or he) will lay it out in an hour or two at the most.

A big problem with "laying out as you write" is that it is easy to make errors which you then "correct" so it looks OK on the screen. You then edit something and the "corrected error" spills to another page and promptly shows up. THe more you fiddle with it the messier it gets - you are busy "painting yourself into that corner".

If you write all the text, and then lay it out starting from the front, it can be done very quickly and without error. In fact, it is almost always quicker and easier to remove all the formatting from what you have written so as to get just flat text. Now do the layout from scratch - it will be far quicker than trying to diagnose and then fix a problem.