Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

...I've read through all the guides and forum postings...still a problem. I have a master document with subdocuments, all created with OO Writer 3.3. Recently upgraded to OO Writer 4.1.1. I have a footer in each subdoc with the "page number" field, which restarts numbering with every subdoc; cannot get page numbering to continue. If I go to formatting the paragraph style for the first paragraph, the option to set page number to 0 is greyed out. Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Welcome to the forum.

I use Master document to edit a magazine with many pages where all page numbers follow on correctly. Each sub document has the identical page format as the Master text, but the footer is empty in each sub-document.

Page breaks are an attribute of the first paragraph - even if empty or a heading - on the page following the break. You can manually set and unset them with Format > Paragraph > Text Flow > Breaks. Page numbers are also set there if you want them to start from a different number.

It is very useful to make page breaks visible by Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Appearance > scroll to Text document > tick Section boundaries > choose a colour for Page and column breaks. Page breaks now show up as a thin coloured line.

So, if looking at all the paragraphs following any page breaks fails (and remember a heading can cause a page break) then try the following workaround when you have finished the document.

File > Export > choose ODT Text Document .odt file > and save as an.odt file. The .odt file is protected - go Format > Sections > highlight all the sections > untick Link, untick Protected - you now have a stand-alone .odt file not linked to your sub documents. Now set the page numbers correctly in this .odt file.

There is much information in Chapter 13 - Working with Master Documents in the Writer Manual - also see Creating and Using Master Documents

If you upload a small sample here (use the Upload Attachment tab below where you type - the master .odm plus two small .odt sub documents, 128kB max for each file) someone can have a look at it.

Have a look at my files - I am forbidden to upload a .odm file to the forum, so I renamed the MASTER.odm to MASTER.odt to get it to upload. You need to rename it back to .odm after downloading it.

If this solves the problem, please edit your original post title to [Solved].

I see what you're doing but that isn't going to work for me. I'll try something else...any other suggestions?

Give us a small sample document - the .odm and one or two .odt files. Zip them together and upload.

RoryOF wrote:Give us a small sample document - the .odm and one or two .odt files. Zip them together and upload.

I can do that, but I'm also in another thread in this forum that says that the numbering scheme in Writer 3 is incompatible with the numbering scheme in Writer 4...thus, you have to recreate the entire master doc in 4, all the subdocs, and copy and paste text...true?

Who knows? Each problem can have multiple causes and cures. If we have a small sample document we may be able to fix the problem. The conclusion that it is an incompatibility between V 3 and V4 is fthynne's (poster in the other thread) and may not be correct. I've had no numbering problems with files coming forward from StarOffice 7 through OO 2/3/4; as fthynne rebuilt his file we couldn't investigate further.

Thanks, try this...

I've got it working but I'm not certain what I did. I think I removed the Write Protection setting from each section, saved and reopened, and numbers are now incrementing. I'll look at it again after dinner, but hope someone else will have a go at it in the meantime.

I opened Dreams.odm, said Yes to update, and pages 1 and 2 had no numbers. Pages 3, 4, 5 and 6 were numbered 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Is this what you want?

All the sections were Protected (Format > Sections ...), but I would expect that because you shouldn't edit text in the Master - it should always be edited in the sub-document.

Well, you're way beyond me...I can't get this to happen no matter what I do...I'm about to give up and do this thing in Word, or something equally repulsive...

See attached PDF created with your files. I do not know why it works for me, but not for you. The problem is not Writer - it is how you are (somehow) misusing Writer.

I use a very simple Master document for a 12-14 page magazine where I adhere to the following rules (which may? will? not work for you because you have different page formats for front matter, chapter text etc):

1 The Master document has some text in it. Using that text, I set the page format of the master, and add the footer for the page numbers.
2 Each sub-document has the identical page format as the Master. This is mainly so that I can edit a sub-document and know it will appear identically (no words spills because a margin is different) because all sub-documents pick up the same page format as the Master.

Numbering is then automatic ...

If you want to use different page formats, then read the Creating and Using Master Documents document I referred you to earlier which covers it.

If nothing else works, there are many workarounds. Writer copes with enormous files, so the simplest is to leave numbering to be the last thing you do and export the Master to a .odt file (File > Export > choose .odt file). Un-link and un-protect the sections. Now do the numbering on the single .odt file - it will be very easy and can cope with multiple different page formats.

Alternatively, create each bit of the book as a single .odt file ( a PDF for cover, one for front matter, one for ToC, one for each chapter etc. It is easy to control numbering in each simple .odt file. copy the files into one .odt file. Or, if you are publishing as a PDF, create individual PDFs and stitch them together with PDFSAM.

Or you may find it easier to start again and create a new Master document from scratch and set its format correctly. Now call in your sub-documents. Remember, though, that while it is a Master document, you cannot force "The first page of sub-doc 3 must be numbered 47" because even if it is 47 now, if you add 3 pages of text into sub-document 2 before it, the number will need to change to page 50. So you must allow Writer to give the pages numbers - the only control you have is by adding a page break which forces the page number of the next page to increment.

skiracer55 wrote:I have a footer in each subdoc with the "page number" field, which restarts numbering with every subdoc; I cannot get page numbering to continue.

Each sub-document fred.odt will start with page 1 when you edit fred.odt because it is the first page in fred.odt. But when fred.odt is pulled into master.odm, fred.odt should pick up the numbering from the page above it - if that page is 43, the first page of fred.odt should be 44 (if it follows on) or 45 if it starts on a new page.

A thought! Are you forcing your sub-documents to start with the first page numbered, say, Page 7. If so, when you pull them into the master, they probably still show Page 7 because your "Force this to be Page 7" overrides Writer's automatic "take the next page number". You must not force the sub-document page numbering in the sub-document - leave it alone to look after itself! To prove this, create a new test sub-document with File > New > Text document. Now copy in a few pages of text but do nothing more - do not try to set or change change page numbering - just save it. Pull it into the master - it should follow on numbering correctly.

Can you post a PDF created from the Master (where you have updated all sub-documents before creating the PDF) which demonstrates the numbering problem, explaining why it is not what you want, and what you do want. If you also upload the (zipped) master and sub-doc files we can look at it.

If this solves the problem, please edit your original post title to [Solved].

Okay...I get it...what you see is not what you get, or some similar. Now the pagination is off in both the source docs and the .pdf file, but at least it's different in both views. Let me go sacrifice a goat, or maybe a chicken, and we'll see what I can come up with next. It's a dinky little document, structurally, but it is my first book of short stories, and I need to concentrate on content and get it finished so I can try to get it published. If I have to, I'll hard-code page numbers on each page. In the meantime...my suggestion is to go have a drink, which is what I'm going to do...

I suggest that, unless your document is of extraordinary size or containing many illustrations, which I doubt in a volume of short stories, you should abandon the complexity of the Master document structure. Instead, make a new document and insert each document in turn using /Insert /File. This will open a file finder screen and your selected document will be inserted at the cursor position.

Thanks, all, for your help...I more or less have it working, using "restarting page numbering" in the "formatting pages" section of the OO Writer Guide...bon appetit...