Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I am writing a novel, currently at about 120,000 words. I'm trying to switch from MS Office to OpenOffice.org (both on WinXP Pro).

My novel is set up with the first three Headings this way:

Heading 1: the book title
Heading 2: Parts (Part 1, Part 2, etc.)
Heading 3: Chapters (examples: Chapter 1: Meet Humpty Dumpty; Chapter 2: Humpty Dumpty Falls Down; etc.)

In MS Word, the chapter headings show up in Word's Document Map. I use these extensively to navigate around the document, which has over 60 chapters. It would otherwise be a real bear to find things.

However, when I open this document in OOo Writer, only the Part headings show up in the Navigator.

I've got the Navigator set to show all 10 levels. I've poked around in Bullets and Numbering and Styles and Formatting but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get the chapter headings to show up in the Navigator.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Make sure the heading styles are set in the Tools>Outline Numbering dialog.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' in your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

Hagar de l'Est wrote:Make sure the heading styles are set in the Tools>Outline Numbering dialog.

Thanks! Now the chapter headings appear in the Navigator.

Unfortunately, now the chapter heading numbers reset to 1 at the beginning of each Part, rather than runnning continuously from 1 to 50+ throughout the book as they did before. (See the images I posted.) Is there any way to fix this?

This is a known limitation of Writer.
For a work-around, see the tips (and the related discussion) here:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... f=71&t=278

RGB wrote:This is a known limitation of Writer.
For a work-around, see the tips (and the related discussion) here:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... f=71&t=278

Thanks for this tip, RGB!

Unfortunately, after reading the above thread and experimenting, I've found that if I switch the Parts to use a List style as the thread suggests, then the Parts don't show up in the Navigator. So I'm faced with a Hobson's choice:

1. Change my Parts to a List style and have the Chapters numbered in sequence from 1 to 69 but not be able to see the Parts in the Navigator,

or,

2. Keep the Parts using a Heading style and let the Chapter numbers reset to 1 at the beginning of each Part, as before. In this case the Parts do show up in the Navigator.

But I really do want the Parts to show up in the Navigator, and I do want the Chapters to be numbered in sequence from 1 to 69. Unfortunately, it looks like I can have one or the other but not both.

Another alternative is to use option 2, above, but add a level to the Chapter number display, so I'd have Chapter 1.1, Chapter 1.2, etc., and then Chapter 2.1, Chapter 2.2, etc. displayed in the Navigator and on the pages. But this isn't the convention used by most novels, unfortunately.

I can't help but wondering why the OOo developers don't provide a checkbox on the Outline Numbering popup that says something like "Do not restart numbering". Or else just allow List styles to show up in the Navigator. Baffling.

I will have to sleep on this before I decide whether this is a big enough issue to require me to install MS Office. I have a copy, but I'm trying to move away from MS products to open source, and I was really hoping to be able to avoid installing MS Office on this new machine.

Anyway, thanks for your help!

I don't recall reading any novels recently that actually number the chapters. I live in a world of academic and reference books where chapter numbering is important for, of course, reference, but I can't remember seeing this in a professionally written novel.

But it could just be that the chapter numbers are invisible to me when I'm reading for pleasure... like the words "said" and "the", they're in there but I'm not conscious of them. I'll have to remind myself to look through my bookshelves when I get home.

Anyway, you do have one more option that will allow you to use the list numbering for that chapter level. Use a master document. You can use the master view of the Navigator instead of the normal view, to keep your chapters organized and even rearrange them.

Hagar de l'Est, you legend, thank you. I registered just to say that.

PS foxcole, it varies I think, some do, some don't.

benpuk wrote:I registered just to say that.

Thanks!

Another approach: for something like this with only a couple of levels, it's not hard to set up the numbering manually.

A simple variable would work, but here I used "number range" variables for the part # and the chapter #, so that one could insert references if necessary. You still have to assign heading levels using Tools > Outline Numbering, but the "Number" setting is "None" and the actual numbering is supplied by the variables. You have total control over when they are reset (or not).