[Solved] How to unlock pictures and frames

[PencilGal]

after much I figured out (with the help of the forum -thanks) how to keep my pictures and frames from shifting all over the document and it looks great.

Now I realize I meant to put a blank page after the title page. I tried unlocking the first two pages (the title page has only a picture and the second page a text frame) and using a page break to insert a page.
Nothing happened.

Do I have to go through the whole 40 page document and unlock all the pages? That seems a tad scary.

Anyone know a simple way to insert the blank page between page 1 and 2?

[robleyd]

What did you do to 'solve' your initial problem? How have you 'locked' pages?

[PencilGal]

In the settings for picture and frame, I ticked the box to protect the position. I also anchored them to the page.

[John_Ha]

how to keep my pictures and frames from shifting all over the document

Read about Anchor and Wrap in [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images.

As a new poster you will find much useful information in the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials, the up to date Writer guide and the Writer Manual. May I suggest you bookmark the pages.

Press F1 to access the Help screen and search for your problem

The chapter headings in the manual are:

1 - Introducing Writer
2 - Setting up Writer
3 - Working with Text
4 - Formatting Pages
5 - Printing, Exporting, Faxing and E-Mailing
6 - Introduction to Styles
7 - Working with Styles
8 - Working with Graphics
9 - Working with Tables
10 - Working with Templates
11 - Using Mail Merge
12 - Tables of Contents, Indexes and Bibliographies
13 - Working with Master Documents
14 - Working with Fields
15 - Using Forms in Writer
16 - Customizing Writer – Keyboard shortcuts.

When a pop-up window opens, click the Help button for extensive help on that function - it is often more comprehensive than the manual.

[PencilGal]

I have spent a lot of time looking for answers in the manual and by searching on the forum and on the Oo site. I have found lots of answers but not this one. Thank you for these further resources. I plan to do a lot of work using Oo and so appreciate this. However I have not, so far found the answer to this question in all my searching. So if anyone knows the answer to my problem or can direct me to the information I am looking for in one of these documents, I would be most grateful.

[musikai]

Don't anchor your textframes and images to a page but to a paragraph.
The anchor to page is often misunderstood.
If you anchor an image to eg. page 2 the image will always stay on page 2 regardless of any inserted content like paragraphs and paragraph breaks.
If you want your image to move with the content you have to anchor it to the content eg. to a paragraph.
This way your image will wander to page 3 if you insert a page break before.
The position of the image itself can be set relative to page margins (and other). So your image can be anchored to a paragraph but be positionend eg. 0cm from top margin of the page.

[John_Ha]

I have not, so far found the answer to this question in all my searching.

Read about the Anchor and Wrap options in the User Guide or in the Tutorial

[PencilGal]

musikai - I went back and anchored to the paragraph, not the page and also left the position protected. It is a bit confusing because there is nothing but the image on the page, a frame containing text on the next page and alternating like that. In that case, what paragraph am I anchoring to?

In any case, I was able to insert page breaks thus and my document now looks just like I wanted it to. Thanks so much for your help!

[robleyd]

what paragraph am I anchoring to

Turn on View | Non printing characters, or Ctrl + F10, or click the ¶ icon on your toolbar and you will see an empty paragraph, shown by a Pilcrow ¶ on the page.

[PencilGal]

Thanks.

[PencilGal]

Hello. I have another question about images and frames shifting about when I don't want them to. I can't find answers by searching and am hoping someone here can help me out.

I am working on a children's book and the format is text on the left page, picture on the right.

Text is in frames. I anchored frames and pictures to paragraph. Protected position.

Now I need to adjust page size and margins before making a pdf of it. I made the changes in the page format area and it messed the entire layout up. Scattered elements everywhere! So I went back and changed one setting at a time. And I find that As soon as I adjust the bottom or top margins from .79 to .50, a couple of the images either stack with a text frame or insert and extra page.

It makes no sense to me as I am actually giving them more room. Plus there was plenty of room in the first place.

Is the answer to go back and anchor each element to the page instead? And if so, is there a way to do that for the entire document?

Joyce

[Bill]

Without as sample document to test, we can only guess about what's happening. I suspect that when you changed the bottom margin, that allowed some empty paragraphs which served as anchors for the frames and pictures to move to the previous page. Have you inserted page breaks on every page to stop the paragraphs from moving when you change the margin?

[Zizi64]

I made the changes in the page format area and it messed the entire layout up. Scattered elements everywhere!

Of course it is the normal behavior. You changed the base (the page size) of the paragraphs, anchors and the frames.

Make the larger modifications always on a copy of the important document. And I suggest you to use the Timestamp Backup extension to make timestamped copies of your important documents.
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/exte ... amp-backup

[musikai]

Is the answer to go back and anchor each element to the page instead?

Joyce

No, don't change the anchor to page. The positioning of the elements is dependant on the horizontal and vertical "position" settings. You can set them relative to e.g. paragraph, margins etc.
If you change the margins or pagesize or your document and have images positioned relative to these then they of course will also change position.

The main problem when setting a layout of images is when dragging images with the mouse. This will often change the relative settings.

An idea could also be to change the anchor to "As Character".

I recommend the extension "PicTool" that lets you fine tune a lot of things , also for multiple images or textframes.

[Bill]

A picture will move if its position setting changes or if the object to which it is anchored moves. Turning on the position protection option will protect the position setting. A picture can not be dragged with the mouse if position protection is turned on. Position protection will not prevent moving the anchor or paragraphs.

In this case where the text is in frames on the left pages and the pictures are on the right pages, I would insert a manual page break for each page. On the left pages, I would insert a frame, set its anchor "To Paragraph" (there should only be one empty paragraph on each page) and set its position relative to the page. On the right pages, I would insert the pictures then set their anchors "To Paragraph" and their positions relative to the page. I would turn on position protection for all frames and pictures.

In summary, turning on position protection will protect the position settings for the frames and pictures and inserting the manual page breaks for each page will prevent the anchors for the frames and pictures from moving.

[PencilGal]

Yes! Thank you so much!! I turned on nonprinting characters and went through and made sure there were page breaks for each page and removed (so many) backwards P's (empty paragraphs?!?) !! I am one happy author/artist right now as I was easily able to set my page format up and it looks great!!

I have a couple lingering questions. I searched the forums but I can't seem to find the answers ...

is there a way to tell the difference (with non printing characters showing) between a page break and a paragraph marker?

Also within my text frames, I have inadvertently used paragraph returns instead of line returns. Is there a search / replace string that will deal with this? This did not seem to bother the page formatting but I am a bit concerned that the paragraph returns will cause trouble when I upload this to my publishing service.

Is there a way to make the enter key just do a line return instead of a new paragraph? Or do I have to use shift-return for every line return?

Again, thanks so much!!
Joyce

[Bill]

is there a way to tell the difference (with non printing characters showing) between a page break and a paragraph marker?

A page break is indicated by a solid blue line that overlays the gray top text boundary line.

Also within my text frames, I have inadvertently used paragraph returns instead of line returns.

Normally, text is allowed to wrap automatically at the end of each line without using a paragraph break or line break. Line breaks would only be inserted to force the text to wrap before the end of the line. Is that what you want to do?

Is there a search / replace string that will deal with this?

No. You can search for line breaks and replace them with paragraph breaks, but you can't search for paragraph breaks and replace them with line breaks.

[RoryOF]

Also within my text frames, I have inadvertently used paragraph returns instead of line returns. Is there a search / replace string that will deal with this? This did not seem to bother the page formatting but I am a bit concerned that the paragraph returns will cause trouble when I upload this to my publishing service.

Is there a way to make the enter key just do a line return instead of a new paragraph? Or do I have to use shift-return for every line return?

AltSearch from the extensions repository can find Paragraph marks and replace them with line breaks. Be advised that OO can have problems with line breaks - they do not read as paragraph breaks although to the eye they have the same effect. In some circumstances (often as a habit from older word processors) users use shift-enter instead of the enter key and end up with paragraphs longer than 64Kb (typically 10-15 Letter/A4 pages and can enter no further text because of an internal coding limitation in OO.

[PencilGal]

is there a way to tell the difference (with non printing characters showing) between a page break and a paragraph marker?

A page break is indicated by a solid blue line that overlays the gray top text boundary line.

In my document, the page breaks appear as paragraph markers. There are no solid blue lines. I used insert - break - page It seems to be working - it's just confusing.

Also within my text frames, I have inadvertently used paragraph returns instead of line returns.

Normally, text is allowed to wrap automatically at the end of each line without using a paragraph break or line break. Line breaks would only be inserted to force the text to wrap before the end of the line. Is that what you want to do?

It is a children's book and I don't want full paragraphs of text, so yes, I want to force the end of lines.

Is there a search / replace string that will deal with this?

No. You can search for line breaks and replace them with paragraph breaks, but you can't search for paragraph breaks and replace them with line breaks.

[Bill]

In my document, the page breaks appear as paragraph markers. There are no solid blue lines. I used insert - break - page It seems to be working - it's just confusing.

Paragraph breaks are displayed as non-printing characters. Page breaks are not. See the screenshot showing the difference between paragraph breaks and page breaks:

PageBreak.png (10.48 KiB) Viewed 2849 times

[PencilGal]

Thanks, Bill. That is super clear. Only it is not what I see. I insert a page break (insert - manual break - page) and it looks like this (uploaded image). I tried it again in a new blank document and the same thing happens. I can't imagine what I am doing wrong...

Joyce

[Bill]

I don't see any text boundaries in your screen shot. Use View > Text Boundaries to display the text boundaries.

[PencilGal]

It appears that the darker line at the top is indicating a page break as I can see when I create a new, blank document and insert a page break. But still there are the P's.

I assume the text area is the area within the document margins?

J

[Bill]

But still there are the P's.

Every page in Writer must have at least one paragraph marker. If every paragraph marker on a page is deleted, the page is also deleted. When you insert a page break, a new paragraph is added automatically. The page break is a property of that new paragraph.

I assume the text area is the area within the document margins?

It's the page text area when there is no header or footer on the page. Inserting a header and/or footer shrinks the page text area.

[PencilGal]

So do you think those P's will serve as page breaks? Or know why they show up as paragraph markers when I insert a page break? Oh, maybe it is just normal to have one paragraph marker on each page since there is perhaps a paragraph inherent in a page unless you create more of them?

[Bill]

As I said in my previous post, inserting a manual page break inserts a new paragraph and the page break is a property of that paragraph. In your document, the paragraph marker appears right under the page break because you're putting your text in a frame and not typing it directly in the paragraph on the page.

[PencilGal]

oops. You DID say that. Thank you so much for all of your help! I truly appreciate it!