[Solved] Using Headings without a Heading?

[James Bejon]

Dear All,

I’d appreciate some advice on indexing within a document.

I think I’m looking for something a bit like a header but that doesn’t actually involve a heading (!).

I’m writing a thesis on names. It’s basically prose interspersed with the analysis of hundreds of names, which are a bit like dictionary entries. The thesis is structured in a pretty normal way with headings and sub headings (Heading 1, Heading 2). These are automatically numbered, so the structure is:

1 Introduction
⇒ 1.1 Opening comments
⇒ 1.2 Literature Review
⇒ 1.3 …
2 Thesis
⇒ 2.1 Statement of Thesis
⇒ 2.2 …
etc.

It would be really handy if, each time I analysed a name, I could assign it a style which gave it a number that I could then link to elsewhere in the document. E.g., Suppose in the main body of ‘2.1 Statement of Thesis’ I analyse five names. It would be great if I could give them a style (‘Heading 3’?) which automatically suffixed them with a number—e.g., John (2.1.1), James (2.1.2), Richard (2.1.3), etc.—so I could link to it elsewhere in the document (with Insert ⇒ Cross-Reference). I don’t, however, want each name to be a heading/title which starts a new paragraph. Rather, I want to be able to include a few of them in a paragraph.

If anyone has any ideas, I’d be glad to hear them.

James.

[Hagar Delest]

Sure you can do that!
It is the same as the AutoCaption feature when you insert a picture for example.

Go to the menu (LibreOffice, should be similar in AOO) Insert > Field > More fields (Ctrl+F2), then go to the Variables tab. Select Number range and give it a name at the bottom of the dialog, say 'Author', then in the Value field type 'Author+1'. Set the numbering level needed (on the right of the dialog). Then insert wherever needed.

You can then insert cross references to those fields with the Insert > Cross reference dialog.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the 🖉 button if your issue has been fixed.

[James Bejon]

Absolutely perfect—Thank you so much! Hugely impressed with OpenOffice so far.