Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Is there a way of specifying page formats for individual sheets in a workbook?

I have a workbook with sheet1 in landscape, and sheets 2 & 3 in portrait.

The Format/Page/Page seems to apply to the whole workbook, and not individual sheets, is there a way round this, or am I missing something?

Yes, there is.

Use different page styles for the sheets.

Solved it myself!

Create new page styles from Default, called Portrait and Landscape.

Assign each sheet to the appropriate style, and set Format/Page/Page as appropriate. (This only has to be done once for each style)

Simple when you know how

Zizi64, Thank you, our messages crossed

Yes... Well.... as is so often true, what is "simple" for the cognoscenti is less than clear for the rest of us... So, having muddled through this (with many disconcerting crashes of Calc along the way), I will offer the following details, which I hope will be helpful:

1) To create a an appropriate Style, select: Format > Styles > Styles and Formatting . This will open a side panel entitled "Styles and Formatting".
(oops... ha-ha... In actually going through the steps for purposes of this post, Calc crashed YET AGAIN : as it has done maybe a dozen times in trying to figure out how to do this. The "Document Recovery" procedure generally works, as it did again this time... but it's been frustrating. And just in case it's relevant to anyone, when Calc restarted, I was in a different side panel, for "Styles" rather than "Styles and Formatting"....
So.... Let's see... Where was I? Oh, yes... )

2) In the <Styles and Formatting> side panel, there are icons in the upper left corner for two tabs: "Cell Styles" and "Page Styles" (based on their ToolTips popups).
Select <Page Styles>.

3) Assuming you've not already defined any new styles, only two predefined styles will (might?) be present: "Default" and "Report". To create a new style, right-click anywhere within the side panel, and select "New..."

4) A dialog window will open having 7 tabs.
In the "Organizer" tab, enter a name for your new Style. In separate steps, I created TWO (2) new styles, called "Landscape_Layout" and "Portrait Layout".

5) Then, in the same window, select the "Page" tab, and indicate the desired page orientation using the radio buttons.
Then, click "OK".

6) Your new style(s) have now been created, but are NOT YET associated with the active worksheet. To accomplish this:
a) Make sure the desired worksheet is active (Selected). Then,
b) in the Styles and Formatting window, left-click-and-HOLD the corresponding style ("Portrait_Layout" or "Landscape_Layout", in my case) UNTIL the name becomes highlighted in gray. (er.... that's "grey" for many of you). You can then select another worksheet and attach a different style.

There are evidently many more formatting features you can set in "Styles"... but what I just wrote represents 100% of what I know about it, or intend to know.

I've become so unhinged by the notion of "Styles", after having (painfully) struggled and suffered with them for many years in Microsoft Word, that I would never have clicked on the Format-Styles in Calc, if this apparently were not the only way to get different sheets in the same workbook to print at different page orientations.

Hope this helps.

It's not just me then?
Creators of word processor and spreadsheets packages add so many bells and whistles, because they think they know what we want, that they end up spoiling a good thing. MS office97 is a good example. It was a neat package that did what was required until MS decided 'we' didn't want a menu system, so introduced ribbons etc. thus ruining it, hence my move to Openoffice.
My wife uses MS office (2013?) and when she asks for my help, I really stuggle to do the simplest thing.
MS and others seem to have forgotten the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid!
All they see is the bottom line, where profit rules

This is a process that used be known (when computers were stream-driven) as "Rampant Featuritis". The 10% rule applies - 90% of all work is done using 10% of the facilities of the tool.

when computers were steam-driven

Fixed that for you

by GowerMick » Tue Jun 28, 2016 3:08 am

It's not just me then?

Ha-ha.... "You are not alone!" (as the dearly departed David Bowie sang with such passion and angst).

The "Ribbon" is an abomination... We hates it forever. My personal preference, however, is for the "XP" (ca. 2002) versions of the Office apps.... which I still use most of the time, although I do have Office 2010 and LibreOffice installed as well. In fact, it was the introduction of the "Ribbon" in 2007 that motivated my first effort to switch to OpenOffice. The user interface is similar in concept to Office XP, having an intuitive (to me, at least), hierarchical menu structure... so it shouldn't be hard to learn, but I've never spent enough time to feel really comfortable with it, and quirky issues such as the "Page Orientation"--which are SO simple (!) in Excel 2002--can be time-consuming and frustrating.

In any case, the biggest problem I have with the more recent versions of Microsoft Office is not with unwanted "bells and whistles", but Microsoft's attitude that they know better than I do what I want, and their misguided efforts to simplify things on my behalf. The net effect is to "dumb things down", to try to relieve us of the burdensome task of actually having to think (... a notion that has been enthusiastically embraced within American society. ) Not only is the "ribbon" confusing and chaotic, but they've actually removed controls and options that were available previously.

"Style Sheets" in Word are another story. They've always been a "hot mess", and so far as I'm aware, they've only gotten worse with time. (There's nothing really equivalent to this in Excel. Powerpoint, however, has design templates that are similar in purpose... although a bit easier to use.) The general idea of being able to "apply" a consistent, standardized format to any document is appealing, but this isn't quite how Style Sheets work. At one point, I got so desperate as to engage a computer consultancy to help me figure it out. Their Word experts did, in fact, clarify the situation for me. Their simple advice was: "Don't use Style Sheets". In other words... If I wanted a particular style, just apply it manually! This wasn't quite what I was looking for from them, but was probably the best suggestion.

So that about sums it up... The more "automation" that's incorporated into the software, the less direct cause-and-effect control the user has on the outcome.

You may find Bruce Byfield's book on "Designing with LibreOffice", which is also largely applicable to OpenOffice, of help.

A PDF of the book, and/or a zip file of the chapter ODTs, can be downloaded free from the book's website. If you prefer, you can buy a printed copy.
http://designingwithlibreoffice.com

That is a long read. A more succinct read is
Writer for students (several languages)