Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Don't know where else to post this. I frequently have to change the page margins in a document I receive. Right now that involves setting each margin individually. It would be a nice improvement if there was a button on the page tab that would set all margins to, let's say, the left margin value or just have a box to enter a value so that all margins could be reset at one time. If anyone knows how to send this idea to the developers, please do so.

That sounds like you get a document in DOCX format or PDF and import it in Writer. That can get you into a mess. In Writer, page margins and some other page formatting details are controlled by page styles, in MS Word they are controlled by sections, and they aren't compatible. So you may get a DOCX and when you open it, you have a separate page style for each page. The only thing you can do is to delete all page styles in the page styles list (except the ones that you can't delete). Then set the margins in the remaining page style, and all pages will get the same margins.

That's not the issue. The issue is resetting all the margins in any document with minimal action. On the page tab you have to set/reset the margins one at a time. What I am suggesting is to have a simple single step to change all 4 margins at once rather than having to change 4 individual settings.

A page formatted for book printing according to classical book formatting tenets would normally have four different margins.

Write yourself a macro to do your margin formatting as you require, then, if you must, link it to a toolbar button.

This is what page styles are for:

https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Docume ... age_styles

Edit: you set the margins for the page style only once. Then you apply the style whenever you need those margins.