Applications : Writer - Changing Styles

Status Bar

At the bottom of the Writer window is the Status Bar which is easy to overlook, below is a mashed up screenshot of its parts, you may find it useful so Right Click»Copy Image and Paste below Page Styles.

Status Bar Mashup

Opps, slight problem, its a loooong image and the page isn't wide enough to display it properly so Right Click it and choose Rotate Left and resize the image as large as possible. This works fine on a printed page, you just turn the page around to view it.

Rotate the image to fit the Page

However if we share this document as a PDF File»Export As» Export as PDF.. the end user will have to rotate the entire pdf file to view the image correctly or turn their laptop on its side, and rotate back again to continue reading, so a better solution is to rotate the page instead of the image by changing the page's orientation from Portrait to Landscape.

In the middle of Writers Status Bar the Current Page Style is shown. Writer uses page style's to split a document up into different sections so that it can treat each section differently.
Click on the very first page, the status bar shows the page style to be First Page . Click on the second page and the page style is Index, the third and next pages have default Page Styles and so can have a header and footer which the first two pages don't have.

To change the pages orientation from Portrait to Landscape Right Click the style name on the staus bar, a list of page styles pops up and choose Landscape

Rotate the Page instead of the image

Did the page switch from Portrait to Landscape?? Great. Did the pages above stay as Default Style Portrait?? Brilliant.

Sometimes changing the style of one page can have an effect on pages above and below. If all page styles above changed to Landscape then Undo (Ctrl+Z) the page style change, Click at the start of the Heading 1 Page Styles and hit the Back Space Key ONCE.

The Page Break is now deleted and the Heading 1 Page Styles should now be below the Heading 2 Gallery and Order on Page 4, if you hit Back Space twice,Page Styles will touch Gallery and. Order and become a Heading 2. The image still remains on page 5

Now to insert a New Page Break and this time state that it is going to have a Landscape Style.

On the Menu Bar Click Insert»More Breaks»Manual Break and in the Insert Break Box Click on Page Break and in Page Style choose Landscape.

Choose to create a Manual Break and chose a Page Style

Now the Page Style page is back and is Landscape the Pages above remain Potrait, great.

Did the Publishing page also go Landscape?? DOH, ok just delete that Publishing page break, do a Manual Page Break and this time choose Default Page Style.

Now back to that status bar image, it can now display properly , if you have rotated the image to the left just Right Click it again and choose to Rotate Right and adjust as large as possible.

I highlight a few things that you might find useful such as..

To Edit and Delete Page Breaks that you made, point at the dotted blue line between the Pages, a little blue box pops up, Click on its Arrow and choose either to Edit or Delete Page Breaks

Deleting a Page Break

No dotted line between the pages means that content naturally filled the page and went on to the next page.

Hide Whitespaces

If you hover over the start or end of a page a small rectangle with arrows pointing towards it, if you see that and Double Click all Whitespace Disappear and Ctrl+Z will NOT UNDO this, take a deep breath, you have NOT destroyed your document.

Show Whitespaces style by Menu

On the Menu Bar Click View and Click the Show Whitespace Box.

Alternately hover over the blue dotted line between pages until you see that little rectangle again, this time the Arrows are pointing out, Double Click that to Show Whitespace.

Click to show Whitespaces

Our Landscape page has no Header or Footer so another way to insert them is to Click on Landscape on the Status Bar, this brings up the current Page Style Properties, lots of tweaks here, have fun with that later, for now go to the Header Tab and click Header on, then go to the Footer Tab and Click Footer on, then Click OK.

Current Page Style Properties

Click in the Header on the Previous Page and Ctrl+A to select all of it, then Click in the Page Style Header Ctrl+V to Paste it in there and maybe Ctrl+E to Centre it.

Do the same for the Footer and yes the Page Number will display correctly as Page 5

Every element in your document has a Style that can be changes to give all your Heading 1's a nice yellow background Right Click on one of them and choose box the same as Page Styles pops up click on the background tab and choose a colour yellow.

Change Paragraph style
A nice Lime background for our Heading 2s

Now all the Heading 1's have a nice yellow background, what do you want to do to your paragraphs, heading 2's etc, the good news is that all your messing around will only affect this document unless you want to save is as a template and use the same styles on another document.

For more info hit the F1 key for LibreOffice help and search for Styles and Templates or check the online version.

Now on to the last page...