[Solved] Wrap text around picture

[Peter Southgate]

I am using OO 3.2 in windows Vista.
When I try to wrap text around a picture in a "presentation" frame I have no success. I have serach the Forum advice and the Help topics, which tell me to right click on the picture and select the Wrap option. The problem is that when I do this there is no such option available - everything but. I have spent hours trying to resolve this with no result. Please suggest what I am doing wrong. It is such a basic function that I'm sure it must be available somehow. Thanks.

Edit: Changed subject, was Problems with wrapping  Make your post understandable by others  -- MrProgrammer, forum moderator

[acknak]

Hi & welcome!

Sorry, but I can't quite tell from your description what application you're working in--are you working with a text document (Writer, word processor), or a presentation (Impress)?

Also, what steps did you follow to get to this point?

[Peter Southgate]

I am using 003.2 "Presentation" option to prepare a slide talk and all I want is to have a picture in a Presentation frame with text wrapped around it. I have accessed "wrapping" in the programme's help option, which appears to only deal with the Calc spreadsheet. I have gone through all the Forum replies covering "wrapping", and found one that says import a picture, right click on it to get a drop down menu and then choose "wrap". But when I do this no such option appears in the drop down menu. An internet search tells me to do Format/text/text wrap. but my Format also does not give me such options.

[floris v]

I looked at this yesterday and found that Impress doesn't seem to offer wrapping options. You can probably only wrap text around images in Writer (and Calc, but I didn't check that).

[Peter Southgate]

Thanks, but I'm just incredulous that a sophisticated programme such as OpenOffice presentations does not have this option, which I would have thought is a standard requirement. Maybe I'll have to go to PowerPoint!

[acknak]

You can have text wrapped to the contour of the enclosing shape but you can't have text in one shape that wraps to fit other, overlapping shapes.

[lerch23]

Hi - I see this is an old question. I still have the same problem today. I can't find a way to wrap text around a picture in an Impress presentation. When I right click on the picture, there is no 'Wrap' option showing. I also haven't been able to find the option to wrap text around a picture anywhere else in Impress.

Is it still not possible to wrap text around a picture on a presentation slide in Impress?

[Hagar Delest]

Not that I know of.
You can mimic it with several text boxes around the picture.
There is a request for LibreOffice: Bug 35563 - FORMATTING: Add text wrapping around images.

[lerch23]

Thank you so much for the prompt response, much appreciated!

LibreOffice is a separate product from OpenOffice, is that correct? If a feature gets added to LibreOffice, it won't automatically be added to OpenOffice?

[robleyd]

LibreOffice is a separate product from OpenOffice, is that correct? If a feature gets added to LibreOffice, it won't automatically be added to OpenOffice?

Yes, and yes.

[Zizi64]

LibreOffice is a separate product from OpenOffice, is that correct?

LibreOffice history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History

[MrProgrammer]

Is it still not possible to wrap text around a picture on a presentation slide in Impress?

Text wrap for a picture is supported in OpenOffice Writer. If it were my presentation, I would use a Writer document to insert the picture and wrap the text around it. Then I'd capture a screen image of the picture with the text, save the image as a picture file, and put that file in the Impress presentation. If you later need to change the text, edit the Writer document and repeat the steps in the previous sentence.

It should be possible to include the Writer document directly in the impress document using Insert → Object → OLE Object (either Create new or Create from file) but I think performing the Writer and Impress steps separately will be far easier. I decline to help further with the OLE Object idea.

This is not your topic, so you cannot mark it as [Solved], but you can let us know if this idea is helpful for your situation so that others can consider this idea.

[Hagar Delest]

If it were my presentation, I would use a Writer document to insert the picture and wrap the text around it. Then I'd capture a screen image of the picture with the text, save the image as a picture file, and put that file in the Impress presentation. If you later need to change the text, edit the Writer document and repeat the steps in the previous sentence.

It defeats the point of a "dynamic" content. It leads to rasterization of the content and prevents any change of the text (content and formatting) in Impress.
Better use text boxes around the picture and wrap "manually" the text in those boxes.

[MrProgrammer]

Better use text boxes around the picture and wrap "manually" the text in those boxes.

But then the text isn't dynamic because it must be reworked manually for a simple change like adding a sentence.

It leads to rasterization of the content and prevents any change of the text (content and formatting) in Impress.

That is true, the text would be rasterized ☹️. And the task could all be done in Impress with a Writer OLE object there. But for me, the extra OLE complexity would not justify the benefit that would provide. Personally, if I had to create a presentation, I would do it in Keynote on the Mac, since all Macs have that tool available. I don't know if Keynote provides an easy way to wrap text around an image. I never use Keynote. And I never use Impress, except to try to help answer topics about it.

Edit: 2025-03-26: Keynote can wrap text around a picture. This is a view of my Keynote screen. And I can open Zizi64's Impress document below (Untitled2.odp with the embedded Writer OLE object) in OpenOffice. 202503252038.gif (64.46 KiB) Viewed 3294 times

[RoryOF]

I attended a talk last weekend where something like this was done.

A mediaeval document was shown, full slide. It was then zoomed to nothing, to reveal under it the full text in translation. Very easily done in impress by placing document image on a top layer, and the text of the translation on a background layer.

[lerch23]

Thank you everyone for adding to this conversation, I really appreciate it.

For me, it's good to now know with certainty that the wrap-text-around-image feature doesn't currently exist in OpenOffice. I had been spending quite a bit of time looking for it, thinking of it as a very basic feature that surely would have been implemented by now. But I do also now appreciate that the entire project is built by volunteers and that it all depends on how many people around the world can give their time to it, plus that there are many other priorities within OpenOffice that I'm not even aware of.

[Zizi64]

wrap-text-around-image feature doesn't currently exist in OpenOffice.

It is not correct. The feature exists in the AOO/LO Witer application, but it not exist in the Impress application.

In the impress: the textual parts of an impress document are grahical objects really - with a text property. You can not "embed" an image into an another graphical object which actually contains some text.

You can embed a Writer document (with a well defined visible part): then you will able to use the text wrap function in the embedded Writer document.

[Zizi64]

Here is a sample file (created in LO 7.5.8)

Untitled 2.odp

(43.75 KiB) Downloaded 44 times

WriterDocInImpress_ LO758b.png (109.49 KiB) Viewed 3347 times