[Solved] How to apply different headers on different pages?

[CampbellsGirl0521]

Easiest way I found to make a custom header:

Right Click> Page> Header> Un-click "Same content left/right"

You still have to enter what you want on each page, but it makes each pages header different. I use this in an MLA style essay with a header that needs to contain last name and the current page number. Wish I knew it was this easy to change, would've saved me a lot of hours trying to insert the correct header!

[John_Ha]

An alternative to Custom headers is to insert a new Page style at the place at which the headers/footers need to change. See this post Changing a header which describes how to change the headers and footers, and also how to reset page numbers, and gives a sample odt file.

I have a multi-page document that has a Header, lines of text and a Footer consisting of the page number. I would then like to have an alphabetical Index with a different Header, and with page numbers starting from 1.

and the solution:

I think your answer lies in the concept of changing the Page Style following a manual page break; and then resetting the page number to start at 1 after the break. See Help on Page numbers which gives a good explanation of how to do it, especially the critical "The new page number is an attribute of the first paragraph of the page"

If you are at given place in your document, Insert > Manual break. You have a dropdown box from which you can choose the Page Style to apply from here onwards. Some of the supplied styles include Index, Endnote, Footnote, or you can define your own.

I had a document with header and footer with page numbers. When I chose Index as the new style from here on (though I could have chosen any, or defined a new style), there were no headers and footers. I went Format > Page and added them. They were blank and I added a different header. When I added a Page number field it started from 1. See attached file.

Screen to set up new page number

Edit: Added later ...

Page styles, breaks and page number are an attribute of the first paragraph on a page even if it is empty or a Heading (or 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 manually insert and delete Page breaks, manually choose the next Page style, and manually change the page number, by placing the cursor in the first paragraph and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks ... (or Table > Properties > Text Flow...) where all these options can be changed.

When you Insert > Manual break > Page break..., the small pop-up window allows you to choose the Page Style for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break; and also the option to change the page number for the first (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break.

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

It is very useful to make Page breaks visible by Tools > Options > 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 where the problem lies. This is the default setting on recent installations where the Page break appears as a thin blue line.

Thin blue line showing there is a Page Break here

page break.png (10.07 KiB) Viewed 3038 times

You can get more information on numbering on pages 135 - 144 in Chapter 4 - Formatting Pages of the Writer Manual.

[ErnestQuartz]

To obtain a different header on the title page from the rest of the document:

INSERT-->COVER PAGE

This automatically enables the page to have a header independent from the rest of the document.

[Bill]

@ErnestQuartz: This is the Apache OpenOffice Community Forum. There is no Insert > Cover Page in Apache OpenOffice. What is "OpenOffice 360"?

[Villeroy]

@ErnestQuartz: This is the Apache OpenOffice Community Forum. There is no Insert > Cover Page in Apache OpenOffice. What is "OpenOffice 360"?

Microsoft Office 360.
"Microsoft" is the opposite of "Open".

[Bill]

Microsoft Office 360

The MS product is Microsoft Office 365.

[Villeroy]

Oh, really? I thought of 360 because the banksters calculate 360 days per year.
Does Office 365 mean that the office will be offline on 29th February 2020?

[eameece]

I signed up to this forum because it pisses me off after searching for answers and all I find is a bunch of morons trying to give answers to something they have no answer to. You always get the one guy that has about a thousand more questions about your operating system, etc etc but still has not solution for you. It's so freaking annoying. If you do not know what the person is talking about then you probably do not have the solution. So, here is how you solve this particular issue in the simplest terms possible for everyone who is not a computer nerd.

Inserting a page number in header

1) Click Insert --> Header --> Defualt

2) Click Insert --> Fields --> Page Number

Remove header from first page

1) Click anywhere on the first page

2) Click Format --> Styles and Formatting

3) Double click First Page



DONE. IT IS GONE.


Now was that so hard to answer??

I share your frustration. Unfortunately this only works if you only have one page.

When I get rid of the header on the first page, all the headers go away.

When I restore the headers to the left page and the right page, the header for the third page reappears on the first page.

Very frustrating. There seems to be an answer, but BOY, why do they make this so complicated? I am lost.

[eameece]

I feel like I am beating a dead horse here. But I am going to do it anyway. (note: I registered just to make this comment and I hope the developers take note.)

1. I understand that this is not Microsoft, nor should it be. Their way is not always the best. (otherwise OpenOffice would not exist)
2. I understand the Headers are per style in Ooo.
3. I understand you can have multiple different styles in a given document and that is the way it has been suggested to solve this unsolved problem.
4. The way the solution is being suggested above is not a solution, but a kludge. Trying to make something that has a shortcoming work as if it doesn't have one.

Why can't the Header tab just have a 3rd option under the "Same content left/right" that reads "Different first page". This is what all the frustration is about in this thread and my son is screaming at Ooo that it is stupid and has now refused to work with it because he says it doesn't work.

I feel that this option is needed and would work in the following way. WITHIN EACH STYLE, the first page could have a different header. This is not asking for change of how styles are applied to documents, or that there isn't a need to have multiple styles in a document. But just allow for the first page of a given style to have a different header. This is driven by the APA format, NOT a need to copy MS word, which I feel is inferior to this in some respects. From the sheer number of views this thread had received, it is obvious it is a problem or frustration to many people.

Sorry for the rant, but I feel that the mods and OpenOffice have put on blinders with respect to this because they feel there is a solution that works, all be it that it is an arcane way of doing it. You have forgotten to listen to your audience.

--End Rant--

Thanks for the rant. There seems no easy solution to this. OOW decided to make it especially difficult just to put headers on pages. They should know that some people use OOW to write manuscripts and books. Books do not have headers on the first pages of chapters; that's redundant. THen they have the title of the book on the following left page, and then the chapter title on the right. That seems like it should be easy for OO writer programmers to understand, but they don't.

Instead, everytime I try to specify that the second page is the left page, it tells me that it's the right page. I have tried making manual page breaks, but it seems to make no difference at all if I do. So far, no one online anywhere has an answer. I guess they want us to be redundant on the first page.

[eameece]

Regardless of the merits of either point of view, it's not going to do any good to discuss it here. No one here can do anything about it. Getting the page layout configured is known to cause lots of confusion and problems and there are already open issues in the project bug-tracking database asking for improvements.

The bottom line (just my opinion, of course): yes, it's confusing and difficult to get started with but once you see how it works it's not hard to manage. It will take a lot of work to fix it right so we might as well help each other to make the best of what we have now.

If you want to get it straight, go through my structure example here: [Example] Document structure and numbering or the the page numbering tutorial (linked from the structure thread).

But... this thread is about headers on different pages, not page numbering...

[eameece]

To obtain a different header on the title page from the rest of the document:

INSERT-->COVER PAGE

This automatically enables the page to have a header independent from the rest of the document.

That would be nice. But there is no such option under insert.

[Bill]

To obtain a different header on the title page from the rest of the document:

INSERT-->COVER PAGE

This automatically enables the page to have a header independent from the rest of the document.

That would be nice. But there is no such option under insert.

If you had read my post following that post, then you would have seen that I had already pointed this out. That user was talking about an option in something he called "Open Office 360" which isn't Apache OpenOffice. That user hasn't returned to explain what "Open Office 360" is.

[eameece]

Yes, I saw your post after I had already replied to Ernest's.

You get a gold star for explaining and answering the question of this thread, which you wrote on the other thread I started this week:

Assuming you have a document in .odt format with the Default page style applied to all pages and no headers on any page, click the first page, then right-click "Default" in the Status bar and select "First Page". You now have the First Page page style applied to the first page and the Default page style applied to the remaining pages. To insert headers on the "Default" pages, select Insert > Header > Default. Right-click in the first even-numbered "Default" page and select Page. On the Page style dialog, click the Header tab. Uncheck the "Same content left/right" option and click OK to close the dialog. Click in the header on the first even-numbered "Default" page and insert what you want in the header on even-numbered pages. Click in the header on the first odd-numbered "Default" page and insert what you want in the headers on odd-numbered pages.

I hope it can be added to a tutorial. The answer seems to be available nowhere else except what you wrote here. I imagine some folks might like to know how to write different page headers on OO writer! Thanks for your valuable contribution.

[RoryOF]

The manual is at
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/UserGuide/Writer
but unfortunately you have not time to read a book (as you have already stated), so you expect someone else to do it for you and to precis it.

Cop yourself on!