[Issue] Background page colour

[jos]

Hi all,

How do I set the background colour for a full page? I mean, everything. Header, footer, contents and margins. I can change the header/footer, and content in the required colour, but not the margins. Can anyone tell me how?

Thanks,

Jos
Bangkok, Thailand.

[Dave]

Seriously ...The simple solution: use coloured paper.

David.

[foxcole]

How do I set the background colour for a full page? I mean, everything. Header, footer, contents and margins. I can change the header/footer, and content in the required colour, but not the margins. Can anyone tell me how?

Is this something that will be printed? Or could be printed by users? If so, you really should consider not having a background color like that, because printing it takes massive amounts of ink, and you don't want to be responsible for running your or other people's printer out of ink. But that's your decision.

Currently you have to adjust the page style to zero margins and apply the background color.

How you handle the text area becomes a matter of choice and depends on your needs.

If your page margins are the same left and right (i.e., you don't need mirrored pages), you could change the paragraph style(s) left and right indents to the position of the original margins. You could insert a text frame and size it to the original margins, but if you have more than one page, this won't flow from page to page. You could insert a section, choose one column and adjust the indents on the Indents tab.

However, if you have mirrored left and right pages, you'll have to manually format the content on left and right pages to position the text so the inner margin is wider (has a gutter). In this case, it might be easiest to use text frames so you can use frame styles to set the size and position for each frame. But the content won't flow from page to page.

[jos]

No, of course not. For the printing I have a similar template in black & white. It is purely for sending items through mail. E-mail. Not snail mail.
I need to make a full page template in one colour, which is the company colour. In word that' s easy enough, but using Writer works a bit different. I can create coloured header/footer and content. Which will leave the page margings blank. A not very elegant solution is to add a large rectangle in the required colour exact size of the page, and place that in the background.
But I think there must be an easier way.

[Dave]

You won't be able to do it the same way, of course. It's not the same program. However, if it is what you want, you might try the following, which an be accomplished quite readily, then made template for future use:

Drag the borders to the very edges of the page [no borders].

Insert a frame. Size to about where you'd have margins, and have no borders. Insert text and images withing the frame.

I hope it helps. This will be my last contribution to these forums.

David.

[foxcole]

But I think there must be an easier way.

Do you mean an easier way than the one I gave? Dave's suggestion is one way to set the margins to zero, the one I gave is another, so they both accomplish the same thing and which one is easier is up to you. I had some ideas about how to handle the text so it doesn't also stretch to the page edges... but I think the solution of a text frame is the easiest in this case.

There is a request in the Issue Tracker to add an option to expand the background to the page edges.
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=44935

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

It is easy in Open Office.

Format page, margins zero all round.
Border, all sides, the colour of your choice
Spacing to contents the margin that you want (less the border thickness)
Background, the colour of your choice.