Writing a Book

[Mitchel Cohen]

I need help re: putting book in order.

I now have each chapter saved in OpenOffice as separate file.
I want to create a single document by clicking on each of the now-separate files in sequence and have them become separate chapters in the book, in a single file.
How do I do that?

Thank you.

Mitchel Cohen

[RusselB]

While I'm not an expert with using Writer, it appears to me that what you are looking for maybe under Edit -> Changes -> Merge Document

On a side note, I see that your forum signature indicates that you are using OpenOffice 2.1
If this is correct, I would like to strongly recommend that you upgrade your version of OpenOffice and update your forum signature.
If it's not correct, then please update your forum signature as advice given for versons that were released after 2.1 might not work if you are using 2.1

[RoryOF]

See my reply and other replies in this thread
Text for novel

Note that your chapter heading information should most probably be indicated by using paragraph styles Heading 1 ... 10; you can change their style definitions to suit your design requirements.

[John_Ha]

1. File > New > Text document. Set the page style to what you want - probably Mirrored
2. Insert > File ..., and navigate to Chapter_1.odt. This inserts the first file.
3. Insert > Manual break > Page break.
4. Click at the top of the newly added empty page. Insert > File ..., and navigate to Chapter_2.odt.
5. Repeat until completed.

As you will probably comeback to ask questions about page numbers you may find this useful.

Page Styles, Page Breaks and Page Numbering

You can get full information on Page Styles, Page Breaks and Page Numbering in Chapter 4 - Formatting Pages of the Writer Manual. Also see the Writer Tutorials where you will find [Example] Document structure and numbering and [Tutorial] Page numbering.

Be sure to download the two files in [Example] Document structure and numbering and format the example file - it will help you immeasurably.

It's all about Page Breaks.

It is very useful to make Page Breaks visible by Tools > Options (Preferences on Mac) > OpenOffice > Appearance > scroll to Text document > tick Section boundaries > choose a colour for Page and column breaks. Page Breaks now show on the screen as a thin coloured line and identify all Page Breaks. This is the default setting on later installations where Page Breaks appear as a thin blue line.

Also be sure to Set View > Non printing characters ..., to ON to see the paragraph breaks.

Page numbers

Page Numbers follow on sequentially from the previous page and there is nothing stored in the document to tell you what a given page number is because, apart from where a change is made, each page number is calculated by how far away from "its start" it is.

If you want to change the Page Number you must insert a Page Break and set the new Page Number. Go Insert > Manual Break > Page Break..., and a small pop-up window allows you to change the Page Number for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the Page Break.

The Page Number you set is stored as an attribute of "the first paragraph on the page following the Page Break where the change in number is made". It can be seen, and changed, by placing the cursor in "the first paragraph on the page following the Page Break" and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow .... The value " 0 " here means "page number follows on from the previous page number". Any value 17, 23 … etc means that this page starts at 17 or 23 etc.

There is an exception. If you define Page Style Fred to have a "Next Style Bill" then when you insert a Page Style Fred, the next page will automatically become Bill. In this case there is no Page Break between Fred and Bill, and Bill's "start" for numbering is Fred. Format > Paragraph in the first paragraph of Bill has no pagination information.

Page Styles – changing headers, footers and/or page formats

The Page Style following a Page Break can be exactly the same Page Style as the page before the Page Break or it can be a different Page Style.

If you want to change a header, change header text, change a footer, change footer text, change the page number, hide page number etc, you must insert a Page Break and you must select a Page Style which makes the change you want.

If you want to change the Page Style you must insert a Page Break and set the new Page Style. Go Insert > Manual Break > Page Break..., and a small pop-up window allows you to choose the Page Style for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the Page Break.

Page Styles (and hence changed headers and footers); Page Breaks and Page Number are an attribute of "the first paragraph on the page following the Page Break where the change in number is made" even if the paragraph is empty or is a Heading (or is a table at the very top). Note that Heading means a Heading 1 or a Heading 2 etc, and not a Page header as in header/footer.

You can also manually insert or delete a Page Break; manually choose the Page Style (and hence change headers and footers); and manually change the Page Number; by placing the cursor in "the first paragraph on a page following a Page Break" and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks ... (or in the table, and going Table > Properties > Text Flow...) where all these options can be changed.

You can also delete a Page Break by Backspace, or by deleting highlighted text which includes the Page Break.

Debugging problems with page numbers or page styles, headers and footers

Debug Page Style changes / changed page numbering / changed header problems by placing the cursor in "the first paragraph on the page following the Page Break where the change in number is made" and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks .... What is the document telling Writer to do following the Page Break? If you see nothing there to cause the change, the document has become corrupted and (much!) more diagnosis is required. Remember if the Page Number here is " 0 " it means “page number follows on from previous page ...”

Be aware that there is no Page Break between different Page Styles if the second Page Style (Bill) is defined as the Next Style in the first Page Style(Fred). See Fred and Bill above.

Two words of caution

1. You can go Format > Page ..., and edit the format of the page in which the cursor is currently located. However, you are actually editing that page's Page Style, so all other pages which use that same Page Style will also have their formats changed.

2. Do not manually change the page number by editing any paragraph, not even the first paragraph on a page. You must only edit "the first paragraph on the page following the Page Break where the change in number is made". If you edit any other paragraph to change page number your document will go horribly wrong.

[Mitchel Cohen]

Thank you for this. My main concern is the endnotes. There are 20 or so files (chapters) in my book, and I want the endnotes to got to the end of each chapter. Right now they're all numbered from 1 to 700 at the end of the document, and not per chapter.

I am used to formatting individual documents, and I want the footnotes to stay with each document. Each is in its own file.

Thank you.

Mitchel

[RoryOF]

Place each chapter in section /Insert /Section; turn your footnotes into endnotes, and using the Options button in /Insert or /Format sections select to place these at end of section. i use footnotes only where an immediate explanation is needed at foot of page (say for translation of a foreign phrase) and endnotes for longer explanations.

[John_Ha]

See Using footnotes and endnotes in Chapter 3 of the Writer manual.

See [Solved] AOO stops responding when opening this one document for problems with footnotes gathered on pages rather than at the end of sections.

Be sure to save your work as .odt files and not as .doc files - See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.