[Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

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vfredfmah
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[Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by vfredfmah »

I was writing an English article on the energy crisis and some Spanish friends wanted a copy, but in Spanish.
I said yes,
* I'll just stick in a blank page after every English page and
* I'll copy the English page onto the blank page, so preserving the layout.
* and translate the page text into Spanish and
* Repeat for the forty odd pages.

Just one little snag, I can't find where in the Help it tells you ....how to insert a blank page?

The whole point is how do we retain the page layout and text format when going into another language?

If there is a simple answer then please please tell me how. :-)

Bye and thanks

Fred
Madrid, Spain
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Last edited by Hagar Delest on Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by Hagar Delest »

Not so easy because a word processor handles a flow of text, it's not based on a page concept. So no, you can't do that. or use Impress for example.

A workaround could be to have frames (menu Insert>Frame) the size of the page. You can link one frame to another so that if you add text in a frame, the text flows to the linked one if the frame is too small.

But why do you need both languages to be mixed like that? Can't you just make a copy of the file and translate it?
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by vfredfmah »

Dear Guru,
your reply is logical, do it all again. :roll:

But if you look at the attached image, the translation is not the problem , rather it is preserving the original English format.

To produce the article, I used PagePlus X2. Then I published directly as a PDF document.

I had hoped after importing the PDF into OOo2.4 I could simply intercalate blank pages, and retouch, but as you say, there is no insert page button.

c'est la vie mon ami.

As for text frames, those are best handled in PagePlus.

Bye and thanks
Fred
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by acknak »

Why can't you just insert a page break (Insert > Manual Break > Page break, or Ctrl+Enter)?

If you want a true page-layout document, use OOo Draw.
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by sybille »

vfredfmah wrote:I had hoped after importing the PDF into OOo2.4 I could simply intercalate blank pages...
Careful, it's not possible to import a PDF into any component of OOo 2.4.

For PDF import, you need the beta version of OOo 3.0, which is not recommended for use outside of testing at present, and you also need a separate PDF import extension that is also in testing. Further, the PDF importer does not allow you to open PDFs in Writer. PDFs open for editing in Impress or Draw.

So, if you're starting with a PDF, I don't think you need to worry about anything to do with Writer, like inserting page breaks.
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by vfredfmah »

Dear acknak,
I tried out your suggestion but I find I can't then copy the first page into the now blank space .
Probably due to my lack of knowledge on the finer points of tweaking layouts in Writer.

As my masterpiece ;) was written originally in Page Plus, then to get it into Writer in a recognizable form involved a lot of program jumping and juggling text boxes and frames.

I'll go back to PPx2 and bite the bullet.

Having said that, the general question is interesting.

If we use Writer in the Print Layout mode (and that feature is really cool !!!), then imagine having just completed ten pages on the life and times of Joe Soap, moved bit and pieces around for best visual effect, we need to add a bit more to page five dealing with how to recycle tea-bags.

What in your expert opinion would be the best way to provide for such a contingency?

Even if there is no easy reply, many thanks for giving me your time.

Bye
Fred
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vfredfmah
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by vfredfmah »

Ma Chère sybille,
First of all my thanks for offering your help and I must apologise for not explaining how to move from PPX2 to a PDF to an ODT, and thus having wasted your time.

Yes indeed the version Beta OOo 3 is maybe the way to go IMPORTING pdfs to Writer I tried but with a heavy illustrated and many different fonts.... it is maybe still being improved, my verdict is not an easy field to work in and I'll come back once the pdf import has matured. 8-)

How I converted PDF to .odt
I used a conversion utility called deskUNPDF which does a very acceptable conversion to either .doc or in our case .odt.

I'll detail the steps from pdf to .odt starting with my DTP called PPX2:-

in this case PPX2, --> PDF --> deskUNPDF and there we are with an output which is .odt.

Now the print preview of this .odt looks identical to the original PPX2 document. However when we go to the page edit then it is full of little text frames some of which are hiding part of the text and others resist being moved.
Looking at the other possibility, the .doc output, also is a very good conversion from pdf but I feel that .odt is the future.

deskUNPDF
I suppose most people here are feed up paying MSoffice fees or are simply looking for something better.

If you are interested in the PDF conversion to .odt route , then you find it is a pay program. However if you want to use it free, the trial version lets you convert three pages.

You can specify any three pages. First time I tried it, I wanted to view pages, 7,8,9. The trial version allows you to do this, and if I remember correctly, three times. Then you have to choose another document.
e.g. you want to convert freebie.pdf which has 12 pages and having done 123 then 456 then 789 the trial says sorry you have passed your quota....

but if you rename to freebie1.pdf then you find you can convert the remaining 10,11,12 pages

A bit cumbersome but if we are strapped for loot...???

Bye
Fred
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by vfredfmah »

Dear All,

In a way I'm a little surprised why nobody has asked why I want to use pages.

The answer is passing information to other people in a permanent form.

The writing down of thoughts is done in two main scenarios, the toilet paper fans and the treefellers

Toilet paper information

This is basically read and throw away. Throw away being hide it in some obscure nook of your system with a title like....
Boss complaining of time at coffee machine , abbreviated to BossCTCM to help find if ever.


More seriously we can write largeish documents in htm and siblings ,things like technical documents , project progress notes.

But when we want to pass on to others the same information , to get their attention, their interest, convince them....then we find the toilet roll is not good enough.


the treefellers
Yes, leaflets, books and similar all use paper, mocking the original prophets of the paperless office.
There is no getting away from the formatting of information with graphs and drawings to make it readable to your peers and more important to the big boss.
Worse still to get quickly to some part of the text we use an index; need for to locate that part where we relate HP and energy conservation.
I agree in an htm document this is a doddle using a hypertext link but it is not the same.

When you move in the book environment, then the index tells us that the graphs, text and calculations that we want are in chapter 11, page 103.

All of the above basically is my argument for using pages in decent publishable documents.

I hope that I have manage to distinguish between 'cheap and cheerful' versus 'serious' information writing.

Bye
Fred
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by acknak »

I must have misunderstood, Fred, because my experience runs almost entirely the other way. Page-layout documents are the 'cheap and cheerful' (brochures, ads, presentations); flowed documents are the 'serious' information (books, articles).

Sure, page-layout documents can be more efficient at presenting some specific information (e.g. quick-reference cards), but I don't see flowed documents going away anytime soon, unless perhaps they evolve into hyperlinked documents, but that still isn't a page layout format.

I think the essential problem is size: past a few pages, it gets to be a big chore to manage fitting the content to the pages, and every time something changes, you have to do a lot of layout work over again, just as you are finding with your document. When the document content is flowed, there's no need (ideally) to do any page layout work just to add a paragraph, or change the margins or the page size. This allows the author to focus on the content rather than fiddling with the layout.

And that comes back to your "general question": if I were writing a multi-page article, it would be a flowed document and it would be no problem to add more content to page five. Everything after that would move down and that would be the end of it.

If I were making a ten-page chart (e.g. a timeline) dealing with Joe's life and times, then I would use a page-layout application like Draw, where I could control exactly where items were placed on each page.

If it were something in-between, like a magazine article, then I would look for a desktop-publishing application that can handle flowed content within a page-layout environment. OOo Writer can do this to a limited extent: a five-page newsletter would be reasonable; a 150 page magazine, not.
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by JohnV »

I tried out your suggestion but I find I can't then copy the first page into the now blank space
I don't know that it will work with your document but with a normal OOo file you would put the cursor in the new page 1 and press Delete to move the new page 2 into the new page 1. Now you can go to the top of page 2 and do Ctrl+Enter twice (why twice?) to open a blank page for your translation.
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by vfredfmah »

Many thanks gentlemen, acknak and JohnV

Mr acknak.

First I tend to agree with you completely even though you are apparently in favour of the opposite to what I outlined.

Well as the guru said 'it depends on what you mean by' when someone asked what colour is the best colour.

In our case we do something tangible.... we write and try and pass on information processed by us to be as chewable as the subject allows to others. This then raises the question of who are the others?

I'll need to illustrate with an example. I was an analogue designer in radio through microwave frequency goodies. Then I decided to see how the other half lived , the software clique.

Well said simply I found a new universe wrapped in undescriptive unhelpful geek-speak.
If you are just starting, and have a few years to spare maybe unavoidable, even interesting to aspiring geeks.
I looked at the global wealth of information and weeded out mountains of chaff to get to the bare bones, which in the end I found that even an idiot like myself could understand. I learned .

Next step was repay my debt to the unsung philanthropists ( including your goodselves) on the net who give hours of time and work to help out not only me but the thirsty, the poor and the penniless.

So I wrote a tutorial, a large article on assembly programming of uControllers for beginners.

http://www.piclist.com/tecHREF/piclist/ ... /index.htm

This is a large article or a small book and I stood back and looked at in pride. Then I realised that maybe there were more polished ways of presenting information.

If you care to look at it , no doubt it is practical, however, sadly also a bit geekish , when my goal was the opposite,make assembly programming attractive to most people interested in computers.
In a nutshell a bit too fast, drawings and photos very badly presented..., looked garish when printed, with photos chopped at page ends, paragraph headers on one page, the content on the following and more...

That was my page layout point, the same information can be made much more digestible almost always with a little bit of effort.

JohnV

Please be patient I'm very much new to Writer and still trying to master the basic, very basic text shuffling and manipulation rules.
Don't laugh too much, but I was really stumped when importing text and then trying to reformat the words into blocks of readable stuff, I found that I didn't manage to Start the next sentence on the following line , there was always a blank line when I pressed enter.
The help file doesn't say anything (that I could find) Like

New paragraph press enter
New sentence uppercase+enter
Newe Page Control +enter

Once you know what keys to press ,really neat, but I think the help file needs a special section for beginners on those basic basic keys... later it is so so obvious.... but why be a masochist if there is a special dummy part of the help file?

Many Many thanks for the help, I'm definitely moving up the ladder, slowly, but going up.

Bye
Fred
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by Caracalla »

New paragraph press enter
New sentence uppercase+enter
Newe Page Control +enter
And let's not forget this one
non-breaking space, ctr+space
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Re: How do you insert a page in a writer odt document? [ Solved]

Post by vfredfmah »

Thanks for the ctrl +space for manual line breaks.

Bye
Fred
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Re: [Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by DanA10805 »

Hi All-
It seems to me "why" you want a new page is irrelevant---sometimes you want a fresh new page for a number of different reasons. This is easy to accomplish in Word Perfect by Insert=> New Page or by pushing the Controll and Enter buttons. But neither of these methods work in OpenO. Moreoever, the topic is not found by me in the OpenO help menu.

However, a fix seems to be to go to Insert=>Manual Bread=>OK. This seems to work if you do not need your text to flow over the manual breaks.
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Re: [Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by DanA10805 »

Hi All (again)-
In just previous post by me the fix should read Insert=>Manual Break=>Page Break=>OK.
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Re: [Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt document?

Post by Hagar Delest »

Have you tried Ctrl+Enter as advised above???
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Re: [Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt docume

Post by EciffoNepoEvol »

It says it's solved, but after reading the blog, I still don't know how to do it. Inserting a page break moves the text down, but it doesn't move pictures and text boxes anchored to the following pages. All of these have to be moved one at a time by cutting and pasting, which is very time consuming, especially in lengthy books. Anchoring them to the text creates large blank spaces when they jump to a new page, because there has to be room for the object, and it won't split an object between pages. Isn't there some way to just move everything down one page and insert a new page? Any help would be appreciated!
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Re: [Solved] How do you insert a page in a writer odt docume

Post by Hagar Delest »

Better avoid the anchoring to page for objects IMHO since they won't follow the text.

So the only way is the manual page break. Can you upload a sample file showing what your problem (see How to attach a document here)?
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