Still don't know how to do automatic page numbers and title

[Mama Bear]

I somehow figured this out for my first little book in 2016 but didn't even know how I figured it out. It took me something like a week, and I think I wound up doing it by accident - a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards - type thing? But I wish this wasn't so hard that I have to fast and meditate and say prayers for a dozen hours, just to accidentally get it done.

So now I'm starting my second little book, and because I was never able to document exactly how to do this, in terms that I can understand ( I'm not an idiot - a MENSA member actually, and I tend to over-think things, which doesn't help either. ),
I'll never be able to do this and repeat it again when I need to. But here's what I need to do:

I want to have a footer on each page, starting with page 5, for example. In the footer, on the left side, I need the book title, and on the right side, the page number. Like: Page 1.

And it needs to be automatically formatted that way, from the starting page ( 5 ) through the end of the book.

Could someone PLEASE guide me or at least POINT ME to specific instructions that I can follow, for how to achieve this apparently Herculean task?

[RoryOF]

I gave you pointers to two tutorials and a helpful guide in my reply to your previous post about an hour ago. Use "View your posts" link on the bottom of the blue forum top bar to show all your posts.

[Mama Bear]

I gave you pointers to two tutorials and a helpful guide in my reply to your previous post about an hour ago. Use "View your posts" link on the bottom of the blue forum top bar to show all your posts.

Ah ok, thanks. Didn't know if anyone was going to see an old post like that.

I don't understand, after all this time, why they don't switch to an intuitive and easy way of doing this. They could actually make this program far exceed Microsoft Word.

I guess I need to print out those two instructional posts, if possible, so I can go through them and figure it out. When I have to bop back and forth between a web page and Writer, I lose it.

....

OK, I have the part about applying page styles, and set up a test document, in which I copied the word TEST over 7 pages. I managed to insert a break at the end of page 1, so it wouldn't have a footer and I can set up the styles stuff. I used F11 and set up a style called TITLED NUMBERED PAGES.

But I'm having a problem with inserting Title and Page Number fields. The Title field says Default, instead of the title of my TEST document. And even though I selected pages 2-7 and applied my TITLED NUMBERED PAGES style to them, the Title field doesn't appear on consecutive pages.

But I feel like I'm scratching the surface finally.

It's just that I tried looking these things up in the F1 help file and cant find a thing, it's crazy.

[John_Ha]

You may find this explanation helps your understanding.

It's all about Page Breaks.

The page following a Page Break can be exactly the same Page Style as the page before the Page Break. BUT if you want to change the Page Style (so as to change headers or header text, footers or footer text, page numbers, hide page numbers etc) you must insert a Page Break and you must select an existing Page Style, or create a new Page Style, which makes the change you want.

In a correctly working document page numbers follow from the preceding page. If you want to change the page number itself, or remove a page number from a page, or add a page number to a page without one, you need to insert a Page Break where you select the Page Style for that page (and subsequent pages) which does what you want.

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 the Page Break appears as a thin blue line.

Page Styles (and hence changed headers and footers); Page Breaks and Page Number are an attribute of the first paragraph on the page following a change 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. Set View > Non printing characters ..., to ON to see the paragraph break.

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 frst (and hence subsequent) page(s) following the break.

You can also manually insert and delete Page Breaks, 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 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 Page Breaks by Backspace, or by deleting highlighted text which includes the Page Break.

Debug page style changes / changed page numbering / changed header problems by placing the cursor in the first paragraph following a page break and going Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks .... What is the document telling Writer to do following the break? If you see nothing there to cause the change, the document has become corrupted and (much!) more diagnosis is required.

A word of caution. 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.

You can get more information on Page Styles, Page Breaks and Page Numbering in Chapter 4 - Formatting Pages of the Writer Manual.

See the Writer Tutorials where you will find [Example] Document structure and numbering and [Tutorial] Page numbering

[Bill]

But I'm having a problem with inserting Title and Page Number fields. The Title field says Default, instead of the title of my TEST document.

Did you select File > Properties > Description and put you title in the Title box?

And even though I selected pages 2-7 and applied my TITLED NUMBERED PAGES style to them, the Title field doesn't appear on consecutive pages.

Does that mean that the Title field appears on only left, only right or some other pages? Do you really want the title to appear on all pages? If so, then you need to check the "Same content left/right" option on the Footer tab of the Page Style dialog or leave the option unchecked and insert the field on both a left and a right page.

[Bill]

It's just that I tried looking these things up in the F1 help file and cant find a thing, it's crazy.

Try clicking the Help button that appears on the dialogs. For example, to find out where the Title field gets the title, select Insert > Fields > Other to open the Fields dialog. Click the DocInformation tab, then click the Help button. There you will find that the Title field "Inserts the title as entered in the Description tab of the File Properties dialog."

[Mama Bear]

You may find this explanation helps your understanding.

It's all about Page Breaks.

The page following a Page Break can be exactly the same Page Style as the page before the Page Break. BUT if you want to change the Page Style (so as to change headers or header text, footers or footer text, page numbers, hide page numbers etc) you must insert a Page Break and you must select an existing Page Style, or create a new Page Style, which makes the change you want.

Thanks John. I think I have that part figured out now. It's just that the setup for all this isn't intuitive ( as we discussed ) or always evident where to look, to see what things get it done for what I want.

I have my test document set up now, and kinda remember how I did it, but it would help to write the exact procedure down so I can repeat it at some time in the future for ANOTHER book. The problem is that I spent hours messing with things, to get this far, so I don't know how to document what I did.

And I still don't know how to finish what I need to do. I somehow have it starting the page numbering as page 2 now. And I don't know how I finally did it, but I made the page numbers appear on the outsides of the pages, I think, which was what I wanted, AND got the title part fixed.

But if I can JUST document a simple procedure set of steps for this, for the future, it would help.

I've almost felt like giving up on OpenOffice because of this. I know it's a free piece of software and I absolutely have no right to demand anything, but for all the hours I've wasted trying to figure this stuff out, I could have earned $300 at my day job, and it's slowed down the writing of my book, which literally has the potential to change my life for the better, if it takes off.

But I just don't know anything better and simpler to use than this, and I hate Microsoft Word, because they've put so much junk on it, for big business, that it seems whackier than I've ever seen it before, and I go WAY back with it, though I haven't used it in years because of this Writer. But I've mostly used Writer for simple text stuff. Writing a few pages of documents, not for writing books.

Anyway, I'm uploading my test document here, so you can see it. And if I could document these simple steps for setting up future books, that would be great.:

1.) Start page numbering, from page 1, at some page after the front cover stuff and first few pages.
2.) Set pages up so that they have a footer with the page numbers always on the outside, and the Title in the middle of the page.

It sounds so simple, until someone actually goes to do it!

[RoryOF]

You can open a previous book which is formatted as you desire (or nearly so). Save immediately under a new name and delete the texts, leaving sufficient old text to maintain the page breaks. You can then overwrite this text with your newer work.


.

[Bill]

1.) Start page numbering, from page 1, at some page after the front cover stuff and first few pages.

In your uploaded document, to start the page numbering on the second page, click in the first line after the page break and select Format > Paragraph. Click the Text Flow tab. In the Page number box, change "0" to whatever number you want to put on the page. "0" in the Page number box tells Writer to continue the page numbering from the previous page.

2.) Set pages up so that they have a footer with the page numbers always on the outside, and the Title in the middle of the page.

It sounds so simple, until someone actually goes to do it! :shock:

It is simple. When you turn on a footer, uncheck the option for "Same content left/right" since you want different layouts in the left and right footers. On a left (even-numbered) page click in the left end of the footer then Insert > Fields > Page Number. Hit Tab to move to the center, then Insert > Fields > Title. On a right (odd-numbered) page, click in the left end of the footer and hit Tab to move to the center, then Insert > Fields > Title. Hit Tab again to move to the right end of the footer, then Insert Fields > Page number. Never use multiple spaces to position text in a line. Always use tabs. The width of a space can change when the font is changed and what was close to center with the original font may be far from the center with the new font. Tab stops don't move when fonts are changed.

[Mama Bear]

You can open a previous book which is formatted as you desire (or nearly so). Save immediately under a new name and delete the texts, leaving sufficient old text to maintain the page breaks. You can then overwrite this text with your newer work.
.

I actually tried that, with a copy of my first book. But it's over 100 pages and when I deleted the old stuff, it botched the page numbering all up.

[jrkrideau]

Can anyone tell me why Pg. 7 does not have the same footer as the earlier pages? I assume I'm missing something obvious but I don't see a page break or new style.

@ Mama Bear
You are saving that file in MS .doc format which is not a really good idea. Every time you open the file or save it Writer is translating it. AOO translators are very good but not perfect and tiny translation errors can accumulate causing formatting problems and in the worst cases a sudden catastrophic loss of the file. Damaged MS Word files seem just about impossible to recover in such a situation.

it is much safer to always work in AOO native format (.odt) and only export to .doc if you need to share it with some one whose software cannot read a odt file.

[John_Ha]

Melissa

If you are going to write a book you will find it well worth your time to read the Writer Manual and especially Chapter 4 - Formatting Pages which describes page numbering in detail. An hour spent reading it will save you tens, if not hundreds, of hours later.

Similarly read the Apache Open Office for Students Writer guide which gives a brief introduction to all the Writer features.

As jkrideau says do not save the file as a .doc file. See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.

[John_Ha]

Can anyone tell me why Pg. 7 does not have the same footer as the earlier pages? I assume I'm missing something obvious but I don't see a page break or new style.

I think it is correct.

Pages when viewed in Book layout

Page 1 has Page Style Default.
Page 2 to 7 are have Page Style Convert 1.

Convert 1 is a Mirrored Page Style. The footers on the Left pages are all the same; the footers on the Right pages are all the same; but the text layout inside the footers on the Left pages is different to the text layout inside the footers on the Right pages.

I have seen problems with Convert 1 (and 2 and 3) page styles before and it was with a .doc file! See Re: Forced page breaks.

I created a new document by File > New > Text document ..., and went Insert > File ..., and inserted the original document. I saved it as a .odt file. Note how I now have a blank page at the beginning and then two page breaks following it.

I think there is something corrupted in the .doc file. I don't know whether the corruption was caused by AOO, as Bill has suggested; or by editing the file in MS Word. Note that the test file has presumably been created as a copy of the original file - File > Properties shows it has been open for editing for edited 1,836 hoyurs which suggests it has been heavily edited. Heavily edited files seem to get "tangled".

[jrkrideau]

You are correct, of course. It is early here and my excuse is that I had not even finished my first cup of tea. Thanks.

Time for another cup of tea.

[John_Ha]

No problem. I am again going with Calvin's (of Calvin and Hobbs cartoons) approach to New Year Resolutions. I quote:

Resolutions? ME?? Just what are you implying? That I need to change?? Well, buddy, as far as I'm concerned I'm perfect the way I am!

Happy New Year!

[John_Ha]

One more thing. In Re: Forced page breaks, Bill says

I don't understand why it does this. Is OO creating a page break because there's a paragraph that spans Pages 1 and Pages 2?

That is exactly what Writer is doing when the page style is changed using the "Next Style" setting and the document is saved in .doc format. In that case, when a paragraph starts on the first page and ends at the bottom of the first page or on the second page, then a page break is inserted after the paragraph. The First Page style does use the "Next Style" setting to change the style of the next page to "Default", so a page break is always inserted when the First Page style is used and the document is saved in .doc format.

While LO Writer seems to handle the uploaded document without inserting a page break, LO did insert the page break in another basic text document after I applied the First Page style to the first page and changed the margins for the First Page style.

Look at Page Numbering Test Document.doc Melissa uploaded. There are no paragraph breaks so the paragraph flows across multiple pages. Bill earlier says

Years ago, the "Next Style" setting in a page style wasn't exported when saving in the .doc format. The page break problem may be related to the attempt to fix that problem.

Issue 60332 - WW8: Follow style lost on round-trip

When the document is opened in AOO Writer, the First Page style is applied to the first page and the "Next Style" setting is used to change the page style of the second page to the Default style. When the document is opened in LO Writer, the Default page style is applied to the first page so the "Next Style" setting isn't used to change the page style for the second page.

So, has the original document got a paragraph which spans more than one page, which has been saved as a .doc, then saved as a .odt and then saved as a .doc? The "round trip" causes the problem.

Melissa - stop saving it as a .doc! Save it as a .odt and fix the problems in the .odt. Never save it as a .doc again!

Also, are you aware that you might be writing very long paragraphs? Are you aware of the difference between Shift+Enter, which gives a line break; and Enter, which gives a new paragraph? If you copy text from an email it usually has line breaks, and not paragraphs. Writer has a limit on the number of words? characters? in a single paragraph. Click the ¶ (pilcrow) icon to see, or go View > Non-printing characters.

[RoryOF]

Also, are you aware that you might be writing very long paragraphs? Are you aware of the difference between Shift+Enter, which gives a line break; and Enter, which gives a new paragraph? If you copy text from an email it usually has line breaks, and not paragraphs. Writer has a limit on the number of words? characters? in a single paragraph. Click the ¶ (pilcrow) icon to see, or go View > Non-printing characters.

The limit is 64K characters per paragraph. This amounts to about 15 A4/US Letter pages of typescript; if no Paragraph marks are used (Enter), but instead line breaks (Shift Enter) suddenly Writer will refuse to accept further input. For programming reasons it dosn't always happen exactly on the 65535 character count, but somewhere about there.

[Bill]

Convert 1 is a Mirrored Page Style. The footers on the Left pages are all the same; the footers on the Right pages are all the same; but the text layout inside the footers on the Left pages is different to the text layout inside the footers on the Right pages.

That was really confusing me at first. The left and right footers are obviously different, but the "Same content left/right" option for footers on the pages is checked. I created a new similar document using two page styles with footers turned on and the "Same content left/right" unchecked for both styes. When the document was saved and reloaded, the two page styles were named "Default" and "Convert 1". The "Same content left/right" option remained unchecked for the "Default" page style but was checked for the "Convert 1" style even though the left and right footers were actually different in both styles. This has to be a bug in AOO since the document was never touched by any other program. This is another reason not to use the doc format.

Page Numbering Test 2.doc

Footer options

(30.5 KiB) Downloaded 210 times

[keme]

Convert 1 is a Mirrored Page Style. The footers on the Left pages are all the same; the footers on the Right pages are all the same; but the text layout inside the footers on the Left pages is different to the text layout inside the footers on the Right pages.

That was really confusing me at first.
...
This has to be a bug in AOO since the document was never touched by any other program. This is another reason not to use the doc format.

Call it a bug, glitch, or shortcoming. The operative cause, as you also figured out, lies in using a foreign file format. MS Word stores page properties as part of the paragraph style, and has no concept of "page style", so there is no way to store page styles when using the Word "doc" storage format. Writer depends on the use of page styles (no direct page formatting allowed), so when opening a Word document, Writer will extract page properties to a newly generated page style. This is what becomes the "Convert 1" page style. If differing page styles are created, you get multiple "Convert x" page styles. Most likely the conversion will also generate other residue in the file, which is not as readily visible.

Stick to your own advice and use native file format whenever you can.

[John_Ha]

What advice should we give to a user having a "broken" .doc file with this problem? Does looking for a page style named Convert 1 identify the problem?

Save your file as a .odt file is the first step. What do they then need to do to the .odt file to fix the problem?

I found that F11 to open the Styles and Formatting window > Page Styles > highlight Convert 1 > right-click > Delete ..., got rid of the Convert 1 page style and all Convert 1 pages became Default.

Also, I have updated [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files to include:

Edit: If you use different Page Styles in a document, and you save the file as a .doc, you will almost certainly run into seemingly endless problems with page numbering, headers, footers and page styles. This seems to be because AOO and MS Word handle Page Styles differently. AOO (and probably LO) seems to have a problem coping with this difference when using Save as .doc .... The problem does not occur when you Save as .odt .... If you have a Page Style named Convert 1 (or 2, 3 ... etc) in your .doc file, you have the problem - ask for advice on the forum.

Is that the best way to phrase it? Or can it be said better?

[jrkrideau]

Looks pretty good to me.

[John_Ha]

What advice should we give to a user having a "broken" .doc file with this problem? Does looking for a page style named Convert 1 identify the problem?

I found the following worked on the Page Numbering Test Document.doc posted above, and on SMART Manuscript.doc from this post.

1. Save the .doc file as a .odt
2. Delete the Convert 1 (and 2, 3 ... etc) Page Style(s). Open the .odt > F11 (to open the Styles and Formatting window) > Page Styles > highlight Convert 1 > right-click > Delete .... Convert 1 does not disappear so do it again - the second time AOO asks if you really want to delete a style being used - say YES.
3. Save the file.

F11 > Page Styles.
Or Format > Styles and Formatting > Page Styles.

Clipboard01.png (17.54 KiB) Viewed 8852 times

The document structure was then fine although, as all the Convert 1 pages had been changed to Default Page Style, there were no headers, footers, page numbers etc, and these all had to be re-done.

I wonder if this is why some page numbering problems seem to get users into so much trouble? Should a first question be "Do you have any Page Styles named Convert 1 (or 2, 3 ...)? If YES, then follow the advice above.

I cannot think of a simple way of preserving the header, footer and page numbering in the Convert 1 etc Page Styles but, once the problem is fixed so that there are no errors in the .odt file, it is trivially easy to re-apply the headers, footers and page numbering without running into difficulty.

[Bill]

1. Save the .doc file as a .odt

Before saving as .odt, the user should look at the header and footer settings for the Convert page styles and fix them. In this case, the "Same content left/right" setting should be unchecked for the footer and the "Header on" setting should be unchecked for the header. If that isn't done, then those incorrect settings will be saved in the .odt file, adding unwanted headers as well as disabling different footers.

2. Delete the Convert 1 (and 2, 3 ... etc) Page Style(s). Open the .odt > F11 (to open the Styles and Formatting window) > Page Styles > highlight Convert 1 > right-click > Delete .... Convert 1 does not disappear so do it again - the second time AOO asks if you really want to delete a style being used - say YES.

The Convert page styles shouldn't be deleted. They are necessary for proper formatting of the document. They will just have to be re-entered by the user.

3. Save the file.

The problem is caused by the AOO import filter messing up the header and footer settings in the Convert page styles. If the doc file is opened with LO, the header and footer settings are correct.

[Mama Bear]

This is all making me dizzy.

Thanks guys.

Think I'll try to get it adapted into the setup of my first book. Sounds the least time consuming.

To the software engineers: PLEASE make this all intuitive and easy for people other than yourselves, to use?
As a small part time business owner, I'd even be willing to PAY something for that!

Thanks!

[RoryOF]

My experience is that it takes three non-trivial documents (in my case this was several 20/30 page booklets) to get fully to grips with the use of Styles in OpenOffice. Once one has mastered that, there is no problem and one can instinctively do advanced book-formatting in OpenOffice.

This document is succinct and helpful: Apache Open Office for Students Writer guide

But you have to read it - I have given up reading and interpreting documents for others who are not inclined to read them, both in connection with OpenOffice and in other areas.

[John_Ha]

This is all making me dizzy.

I am not surprised - as you can see were were stumbling around too. Let me give you a recap

1. AOO seems to have a bug in the .doc read/write code which corrupts a .doc file and messes up page numbering, page styles and bullets (and possibly more). If you correct the problem in the .doc file, and save the file as a .doc, the problem just comes back again. It cannot be fixed in a .doc file, so ...

2. ... save your file as a .odt file and never save it as a .doc again - never. Now fix the problem in the .odt file and it will stay fixed!

Ask here for advice or send me the .doc (preferably) or the .odt file, and I will fix it for you. I have sent you a message with my email ID. If someone demands you give them a .doc file, then make them a .doc file as a copy ... but still keep working on the master .odt file.

3. Read the document Rory suggests.

4. Check how long your paragraphs are - no paragraph can have more than 64000 characters. Are you using line returns? or ends of paragraph? See here

NB There is the Paid Support forum where you can ask for paid support.

[Mama Bear]

This is all making me dizzy.

I am not surprised - as you can see were were stumbling around too. Let me give you a recap

1. AOO seems to have a bug in the .doc read/write code which corrupts a .doc file and messes up page numbering, page styles and bullets (and possibly more). If you correct the problem in the .doc file, and save the file as a .doc, the problem just comes back again. It cannot be fixed in a .doc file, so ...

2. ... save your file as a .odt file and never save it as a .doc again - never. Now fix the problem in the .odt file and it will stay fixed!

Ask here for advice or send me the .doc (preferably) or the .odt file, and I will fix it for you. I have sent you a message with my email ID. If someone demands you give them a .doc file, then make them a .doc file as a copy ... but still keep working on the master .odt file.

3. Read the document Rory suggests.

4. Check how long your paragraphs are - no paragraph can have more than 64000 characters. Are you using line returns? or ends of paragraph? See here

NB There is the Paid Support forum where you can ask for paid support.

Thanks, but all this is just too much. like the OP said, they had to read several 50 page documents? Seriously? I need to write a book, not read books on how to use a word processor.

I don't know what to do anymore - this is very discouraging. I don't like Microsoft and have been using Writer for basic things for years, without spending massive amounts of time learning the deep stuff. It needs to be made intuitive, but I cant change that, so I don't know what to do now. Hopefully I can fit my new book into a file copy of the old one, and at least get the book done. It probably would have cost me less, in the long run, just to pay the $200 for Microsoft Word and stay with that, for these last several years, but I didn't know that.

[John_Ha]

I don't know what to do anymore - this is very discouraging.

Just read the bit you copied into your last post. STOP SAVING YOUR FILE AS A .DOC FILE AND SAVE IT AS A .ODT FILE.

[Mama Bear]

I don't know what to do anymore - this is very discouraging.

Just read the bit you copied into your last post. STOP SAVING YOUR FILE AS A .DOC FILE AND SAVE IT AS A .ODT FILE.

Yes, I got that, and saved my new book file as ODT after seeing it.

I just don't know what to do for a word processor now.

I guess I can keep using Writer, being 95% of what I do is very simple, and just try to work new book stuff into a previous book file, if I can make that work, which I've wasted much of the weekend on, just now.

But one thing I'd like to say to the developers and company people, if they're listening: The world is STARVING for an alternative to Microsoft - a company that has been too big for their britches for DECADES now. So if you make this suite intuitive and easy to use, then market it as the easier alternative to Microsoft, I bet you could SELL tons of it, all over the WORLD! I would buy it, if it were so. I would easily pay, for example, $75 for a suite like this, and I'm just a part time home business. So think capitalist with this, and you don't need to give it away for "free", if you make it easy to use and intuitive!

Thanks!

[Villeroy]

The tutorial http://openoffice-uni.org/ is availlable as PDF for reading, as ODT which is the source of the PDF and as plain text which is the source of the ODT. It describes how to write a academic thesis from scratch. Finally you should be able to generate the whole tutorial document from nothing but plain text within minutes.
Chapter 48 shows how to fix broken Word documents. The vast majority of Word documents are in a miserable state because the authors never learned how to use a word processor productively. If you ever watched a professional office worker doing some magic with MS Word at max. speed then you know what I mean. Nobody buys any books on office programs anymore although these programs did not change for the better since the 90ies when books on Word and Excel where bestsellers in every corner store. A YouTube video is not adequate because seeing how to do something distracts from the general concept, the idea behind the work flow.