If you want to change or remove a header, change or remove header text, change or remove a footer, change or remove footer text, change or remove 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.
You may find this explanation helps your understanding.
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.
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