[Solved] Remove all page breaks, making one long "page"

[MDOcean]

I am creating a very long Doc with included images. I don't want the page breaks, I'd like it to just be one, giant, long, ribbon. I haven't been able to find a way to remove all page breaks at one time, and hopefully keep them from being generated in the future as I contine to expand the Doc.

I was able to locate this old Forum post:
viewtopic.php?t=97556

But it's six years old (posted 2019), and I'm hoping that something has improved since then.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[FJCC]

If you want to view the document without page breaks, select the menu item View -> Web Layout. I don't know how well that will work with images.

[RoryOF]

It may be easier to navigate and also to comprehend the document if you do not remove _all_ page breaks. There may be some logical structure in the document which allows a break, such as in a journal, a break every week or month.

The breaking of a document into comprehensible chunks - paragraphs, chapters - does help with its interpretation and understanding. But it is your document and you must do as you think fit.

[MrProgrammer]

I don't want the page breaks

Pages are fundamental to Writer, which is designed for text documents on pages, so Writer may be the wrong tool for you. If you want to continue to use Writer try Format → Page → Page → Height → 300 cm. Perhaps a three meter page height will be sufficient for your needs.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit ✏️ button and add [Solved] to the start of the Subject field. Select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[RoryOF]

I don't want the page breaks

Pages are fundamental to Writer, which is designed for text documents on pages, so Writer may be the wrong tool for you. If you want to continue to use Writer try Format → Page → Page → Height → 300 cm. Perhaps a three meter page height will be sufficient for your needs.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the Subject field. Select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

MrProgrammer's suggestion would allow the equivalent of about 10 A4 pages or 11 US Letter pages be shown on the 300 cm page height.

[Jan_J]

Please read this old thread:
viewtopic.php?p=501931#p501931
I refer there to similar problem being announced at Polish NL forum in 2014:

300 cm height is limited by user's interface (precisely: by the page style modification dialogue), not by Writer engine itself.
Some time ago, in 2014, I showed how to produce PDF with pages of height 1200 cm or anything else. Here's the link: https://forum.openoffice.org/pl/forum/v ... 57&p=11359
Main text was in Polish – sorry, but the clue was manual change in style.xml file which is language independent. In the further discussion a Basic script was provided that adjusted page height to place document content on a single page. Style modification dialog should never be opened in this document, at least for page styles.
I hope the same or similar methods can be applied successfully today.

There's my old solution — in Polish, but it refers directly to `manual` edit od styles.xml file.
https://forum.openoffice.org/pl/forum/v ... cf9#p11362

It works today. I copied full text of `Midsummer Night Dream` by Shakespeare from https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/v ... =midsummer and pasted it as raw text into fresh Writer document.
After saving, I extracted the file styles.xml from the .odt document bundle, changed page style description inside file from

Code: Select all

<style:page-layout-properties fo:page-width="21.001cm" fo:page-height="29.7.cm" style:num-format="1" style:print-orientation="portrait" fo:margin-top="2cm" fo:margin-bottom="2cm" fo:margin-left="2cm" fo:margin-right="2cm" style:writing-mode="lr-tb" style:footnote-max-height="0cm" loext:margin-gutter="0cm">

to

Code: Select all

<style:page-layout-properties fo:page-width="21.001cm" fo:page-height="12000.cm" style:num-format="1" style:print-orientation="portrait" fo:margin-top="2cm" fo:margin-bottom="2cm" fo:margin-left="2cm" fo:margin-right="2cm" style:writing-mode="lr-tb" style:footnote-max-height="0cm" loext:margin-gutter="0cm">

an repacked it back to .odt. The result attached below (12 meters is too much in this case).

shakespeare_msnd.odt

(54.92 KiB) Downloaded 5 times

That was easy task, since document had only one page style defined.
In more complex case you need to recognize which style controls which pages.
And no using of the pages style management form in the life of document. It will cut page length back to maximal value 300 cm.

It is also possible to write a macro that computes (or ajdusts experimentally) height of the page sufficient for entire text.

[JeJe]

Export as XHTML creates a single continuous file without page breaks. The original odt can be kept for future edits.

[MDOcean]

Ah, fantastic!

Thank you so much, I'll try the long page, and Jan_J, I already tried what you sent, it's great. Thanks, everybody!

[JeJe]

Macro to set page height to contents.

Note: If it fails to make a single page after a few tries remove the ' in front of the 'sty.height =3000 line and try again. (resets the pages to a smaller height first, which seems to help sometimes)

Code: Select all

Sub PageHeightToContents
dim ps,sty
ps = thiscomponent.currentcontroller.viewcursor
sty = thiscomponent.stylefamilies.getbyname("PageStyles").getbyname(ps.PageStyleName)
'sty.height  =3000
ps.gotorange(thiscomponent.text.getend,false)
sty.height  = ps.position.y
End Sub

[RoryOF]

If such a file is being sent by email, it may be that the email protocols will divide the paragraphs up - I know that my email application (Sylpheed) will object to a paragraph of length greater than 999 characters, quoting some transmission standard. the number of which I can't recollect.