Len s Introduction to Word Processing. Table of Contents

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2 Len s Introduction to Word Processing by Len Nasman, Bristol Village Ohio Computer Club Copyright 2018 By Len Nasman [may be copied with permission] Table of Contents Forward...5 Who should use these lessons?...5 Experienced typists should read this:...5 What is needed for this tutorial:...6 Practice using the mouse...7 How the tutorial is organized:...7 Get the most out of the lessons:...7 Avoid Trying Too Much Too Soon:...8 Lesson 1 Getting Started...9 Starting LibreOffice Writer:...9 Entering text:...11 Printing documents:...12 Saving a document:...13 Points to remember:...14 Vocabulary...14 Lesson 2 Formatting Text...15 LibreOffice Writer Display Features:...15 Moving the Text Cursor:...18 Selecting text:...19 Formatting Marks characters:...20 The Undo tool:...21 Formatting text:...21 Changing the paragraph style:...22 Bold, Italic, and Underline:...23 Indenting Paragraphs:...24 Changing font style and size:...24 Aligning paragraphs:...24 Saving the document file:...25 Font color, highlighting, and background color:...26 Bullets and lists:...27 Numbered Lists...27 Points to remember:...29 Lesson 3 Paragraph Styles...31 The Concept Of Styles:...31 Creating Custom Paragraph Styles:...31 Creating a Text Body Style...33 Creating a Title Style...34

3 Lesson 4 Page Styles...37 The Concept of Styles:...37 Formatting page styles:...37 Creating new page styles:...39 Creating a left side page style...40 Creating a right side page style...41 Creating a first page style...41 Defining headers and footers:...42 Inserting Fields:...43 Creating a custom Title paragraph style:...44 Creating a custom Text Body paragraph style:...45 Creating custom Header paragraph styles:...45 Creating custom Footer paragraph styles:...46 Points to remember:...48 Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames...49 Importing custom styles:...49 Inserting and editing date fields:...50 Using standard paragraph styles:...51 Adding tables:...52 Tables or Columns?...55 Inserting Frames:...55 Points to remember:...57 Lesson 6 Adding Graphics...59 Inserting Graphics Images...59 Inserting drawn graphics...61 Points to remember:...64 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter...65 Introduction...65 Importing Styles...65 Inserting a Date Field...66 Modifying a Paragraph Style...66 Modifying Page Styles...67 Importing Text...68 Importing Pictures...69 Adding Captions...72 Inserting a Table of Contents...73 Modifying Paragraph Styles...74 Widows and Orphans...75 Changing The Document Title...75 Changing A Page Background...75 Appendix A - Settings...79 This version was edited July 16, 2018

4 View the Lessons on YouTube Forward v=s37wfvn3b94&feature=youtu.be Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Lesson 5 Lesson 6 Lesson 7

5 Forward Forward My name is Len Nasman. At the time of this writing I am retired, in my 70's, living in Bristol Village < a delightful active retirement community in southeast Ohio, and spending a lot of my time helping fellow residents with computer issues. In a former life, I wrote books to teach people how to use CAD software. Using computers does not come easy to a lot of people. It is not that people are slow or feeble minded. It is simply that to many people, computers are a mysterious thing and more than a little frightening. If you are one of those who is not comfortable using computers, but you suspect that doing word processing with a computer might offer some advantages over an old typewriter, this tutorial is for you. Who should use these lessons? I have created the LibreOffice Writer lessons for people who want to learn the basics of word processing. If all you want to do is to write one or two pages, print the page, and save a document for future use, than all you need to do is complete Lesson 1. If you want to learn more about controlling the appearance of a document, complete Lesson 2. If you want to unleash the power of word processing to create professional appearing multi-page, or even multi-chapter documents, complete Lessons 3, and 4. People who want to control columns and rows of things (as in a financial report or table) should complete Lesson 5. To see how to add graphics to documents, complete Lesson 6. These lessons were created using the free LibreOffice Writer 6 software. There are earlier version of the lessons for LibreOffice Writer found on the Bristol Village Computer Club website. Take a quick look at the page you are reading right now and try to imagine creating a document like this using a typewriter. Imagine that you you decided to add or remove some text, or maybe add a picture, and that caused the number of pages to change, or it caused words to move to a different page. This collection of lessons could not be done on a typewriter, but it is possible using desktop publishing software. With a little investment in time learning the basics, you can enter the world of desktop publishing. Perhaps you want to create family stories to pass on to your kids. Or maybe write a family history that includes not only words, but pictures as well. LibreOffice Writer makes it possible for you to tackle these projects and end up with professional quality results. Experienced typists should read this: Oh oh! If you have lots of experience using a Smith Corona, or IBM Selectric, or other old faithful, you are at a disadvantage. You know a lot of things that you will have to forget before you will be comfortable with word processing. Bite the bullet and dig in. Before long will you will be doing things with word processing that you would never attempt with your old typewriter. Page 5 of 80

6 Len s Introduction to Word Processing When you create pages using a typewriter, you have to be careful to get things exactly right... the first time. You have to carefully format your text as you type. You have to plan the final appearance of the page as you go. If you were trained as a touch typist, you probably, without thinking, put an extra carriage return after every paragraph, double space between sentences, and use spaces and tabs to format your text. You might hit the space bar a number of times to line up columns of text. The bad news is that you need to get all of these habits out of your head when you do word processing. The good news is that word processing makes formatting documents easier than you can imagine, and you can throw away that bottle of white-out that you kept close to your typewriter. When you do word processing on a computer, start by concentrating on getting the words written. Don't worry at all about how the words will look on the page until after you have the words written. The word processor allows you to focus first on content. After all, the words are the most important. After you have written what it is that you wish to communicate, you can then worry about about how the words will look on the page. If you do a lot of writing where you want to use the same format and style on each new project, the word processor can really make your life easier. For example, I prepare a monthly newsletter for the Bristol Village Computer Club. I invested a little extra time on the first several issues establishing the format and style: two columns under a masthead on the first page, a header at the top of new pages, and a common footer at the bottom of pages. Once I had the newsletter design set, additional issues could be quickly created by concentrating on content rather than formatting and style. So expert typist, carry on... Be confident that even though at first, word processing might feel strange and clumsy, it will not be long before your old typewriter will feel neglected. What is needed for this tutorial: To proceed through the lessons in this tutorial you will need the following: A computer with the program LibreOffice version 6 installed. LibreOffice Writer is part of the LibreOffice suite of programs and is available free for downloading from the LibreOffice Internet web site. If you are new to computers, you may need to have someone help install the program. (Setup instructions are included in Appendix A of this book.) After it is installed, you will have to learn how to start the program. Starting the program simply involves clicking on an icon (a funny little picture) on the computer display. LibreOffice version 6 was used to prepare this document. A printer attached to the computer. Page 6 of 80

7 Forward If you are buying a new printer I recommend that you consider a laser printer rather than an ink jet printer. Ink jet printers are cheap, but replacement ink jet cartridges are not. Occasional users may find that ink cartridges dry up and quit working if they are not used frequently. The toner in laser cartridges is a dry powder and will typically have a longer shelf life. If you want to do color printing, the price of color laser printers continues to drop. If you will be doing a large volume of printing, pay attention to the specifications of different printers. Printer specifications usually indicate how many copies a month they are designed to handle. Practice using the mouse. If you have not spent much time using the computer mouse, you need practice. A good way to develop your mouse skill is to play solitaire or other card games. If you play solitaire for an hour or so several times, you won't have to think about which way the cursor moves on the screen, or how to click and drag, or how to double click. How the tutorial is organized: In this tutorial you will find normal paragraphs, steps to be completed, and information boxes. The following styles are used to provide visual clues. This is a step to be followed. When you see text with a check mark and a green background, it means that you should complete the step using your computer. This is a bullet paragraph used for lists. This is an information box. The information boxes contain definitions of computer terms, describe various computer functions, or contain other hopefully useful information. This is a sample text box. It is used to show text to be entered in steps. Get the most out of the lessons: To get the most out of the lessons presented here do not rush. The basics of using LibreOffice Writer are such that you will be able to do useful work after the first lesson. However, to get control over many of the powerful features, there is quite a bit of new vocabulary to learn. There are also a lot of details involved in setting your preferred styles. An effective approach is to complete a lesson, try a few of the ideas presented on your own, then go back and repeat the lesson from scratch. Most people are amazed at how many new things appear in a lesson the second or third time through. Remember, it is the hasty person who takes the most time. Investing a little extra time learning basic word processing principles will pay off in the long run by saving large amounts of time creating complex documents. Page 7 of 80

8 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Avoid Trying Too Much Too Soon: You will be tempted to get into your own projects right away. However, if you were learning to play the piano you would not be eager to perform on stage until you had a few lessons and had spent a bit of time practicing. You would not expect to present a concert the first time you sat down at the piano. The same is true with word processing and desktop publishing. You need to take a few lessons and practice a bit before you will be ready to perform. So, be patient. Go through each of the lessons more than once. After all, if you were learning to play the piano, you would practice the same piece more than once. Give your brain a chance to absorb the new vocabulary and basic principles of word processing. If you try to rush the process, you will probably become frustrated and give up. If you are patient, your reward will be the ability to quickly create polished publications. HAVE FUN! Page 8 of 80

9 Lesson 1 Getting Started Lesson 1 - Getting Started Please memorize vocabulary words as you proceed through these lessons. Most folks who have trouble getting into word processing have trouble because they are not familiar with the slanguage used by computer people. The Windows Desktop is the name of the display on the screen when Windows is first started. The folks who invented this thought that the display somehow mimicked a person's office desk where you might have documents or tools lying around. Starting LibreOffice Writer: Starting LibreOffice Writer with a computer that is running the Windows operating system may be done several ways depending on how the computer has been set up. In most situations, you will have a shortcut on the desktop, on the Quick Launch Taskbar, or in the Start Menu. There are versions of LibreOffice for the Mac and Linux operating systems. The program functions are the same, but the displays will look different from the illustrations in this tutorial. Figure 1-1: LibreOffice Start Options The Taskbar is a horizontal area at the bottom [or top, or side] of the Windows display. Select means to move the mouse pointer over the desired item and click the left mouse button once. Double click means to move the mouse pointer over the desired item and click the left mouse button twice, quickly, click-click. Start LibreOffice Writer. Page 9 of 80

10 Len s Introduction to Word Processing The LibreOffice opening display shows thumbnails of recent documents. It also provides options for the different LibreOffice programs. Select Writer Document from the LibreOffice opening display to start a new LibreOffice Writer document. It will take a little time for the LibreOffice Writer program to open. How much time depends on the speed of your computer. Once the program is open, your display should look similar to Figure 1-3. Figure 1-2: The LibreOffice opening display. Observe that there is a small paragraph symbol in the upper left corner of the document. If the paragraph symbol does not appear on your display, select the Non printing character tool to toggle it on. Mouse Pointer: the mouse pointer is the little picture that moves around when you move the mouse. This pointer will change shape when you move it over different parts of the Windows display. When the mouse pointer looks like an I beam, it is called the Text Cursor. Figure 1-3: New LibreOffice Writer document. Page 10 of 80

11 Lesson 1 Getting Started Entering text: Move the mouse pointer near the upper left corner of the document area (see red oval in the illustration) and click the left mouse button once. This step will insure that the LibreOffice Writer program Window is active and that the text cursor will be at the start of the new document. Note to experienced typists: With a typewriter you had to do a carriage return at the end of every line. With a mechanical Figure 1-4: A new document. typewriter, the carriage and paper moved under the hammers as you typed and you had to shove a lever to move the carriage back to the left to start a new line. With an electric typewriter a carriage return key provided a similar function. On the computer, the Enter key appears to do the same thing as the return key on an electric typewriter. In word processing, however, the computer automatically wraps text to the next line when the edge of the paper is reached. You have to forget the habit of pressing the Enter (or return) key at the end of each line. The only time you should press the Enter key is at the end of a paragraph. Type the following paragraph in the LibreOffice Writer window. This is my first LibreOffice Writer document. I am now typing a new paragraph into the document. I will not press the enter key until I am finished with the first paragraph. When you have finished typing your first paragraph, press the Enter key to end the paragraph and start a new paragraph. Continue typing and add two new paragraphs as shown. (Do not worry if there is not a double line space between paragraphs. In the next lesson, you will see how to adjust paragraph spacing.) I am now typing a second paragraph. It is important to remember that in word processing, paragraphs are ended by pressing the enter key. It is also important to know that a paragraph in word processing may consist of several sentences, one sentence, one word, or even no words at all. I will press the enter key to end this paragraph. Page 11 of 80

12 Len s Introduction to Word Processing This is the start of the third paragraph in the document. The vertical line that moves along as I type is called the text cursor. The text cursor marks the point where new characters will appear as I type. There are a number of ways to move the text cursor around the document. I will learn a number of techniques for moving the text cursor as I go through these tutorials. Your display should now look similar to Figure 1-5. In Figure 1-5 there are no extra lines or spaces between paragraphs. Resist the temptation to manually enter extra lines between paragraphs. Also resist the temptation to add an extra space between sentences. In the next lesson, you will learn how to automatically create spaces between paragraphs. But first, you will see how easy it is to print your document. Printing documents: Figure 1-5: Adding text. Observe the upper part of the display in Figure 1-6. (You will learn about more parts of the display in the next lesson.) Observe that the third horizontal area below the top of the display (called the Toolbar) has a row of small pictures (called tool icons). If you move the mouse pointer over these tool icons and pause, a Tool Tip will briefly open that shows what the tool does. Figure 1-6 shows the tool tip for the Print tool. Select means to position the mouse pointer over a tool and the click left mouse button once. Figure 1-6: Save and Print tools. A Tool Tip is a message that appears when the mouse pointer is hovered over a tool icon. Page 12 of 80

13 Lesson 1 Getting Started Select the Print tool on the Toolbar and wait for your document to be printed. If it is not printed, make sure that the printer is turned on and has been properly set up for your computer. Saving a document: You should never have to type anything twice when you are using word processing. However, you have to Save your document as a File or you will never see it again. Saving a document is done by using another tool on the Toolbar. The Save tool is shown in Figure 1-6. Select the Save tool on the Toolbar, then select the Save As option. At this point the Save As dialog box will open. This dialog box will vary depending on which version of Windows is being used. In any case, there is a File name: text box for entering the name of the new file. Enter My Lesson 1 Document in the File name text box. Then select the Save button in the Save As dialog box. Whenever you want to retrieve this document, you can use the Open tool on the Toolbar. Figure 1-7: The Save As dialog box. Now that you have some idea about how LibreOffice Writer works, you should practice a bit before starting the next Lesson. Select the X in the upper right corner of the display to close the LibreOffice Writer program. Go back to the beginning of this Lesson and go through the steps again. However, this time enter your own text, and save the document with your own file name. There is quite a bit of information to learn about LibreOffice Writer. The good news is that you only have to learn a small percentage of the program functions to do useful things. The best way to become comfortable with the program is to repeat each lesson two or three times before moving on to the next lesson. Page 13 of 80

14 Len s Introduction to Word Processing A big problem facing new word processing users is vocabulary. Try to remember the words in these lessons that use this style. These are words you have to know to remain sane as you go through the lessons. Computer programmers have the habit of taking good old words that you have known forever and giving them brand new meanings. This can make for confusion. If you make the effort to learn the word processing vocabulary, you will get farther faster. Congratulations. You have now created, printed, and saved your first document. You now have enough information to do useful work. Practice by creating a document or two of your own. In the next lesson, you will see how to enhance the appearance of documents. Points to remember: Paragraphs may have several sentences, one word, or no words at all. To end a paragraph, press the Enter key. To print a document using the default printer select the Print tool from the Toolbar. To save a document, select the Save tool from the Toolbar. Then adjust the Save in: folder as required and enter a new file name. Vocabulary Desktop: The Desktop refers to the main display on the screen when the Windows operating system opens. Quick Launch Taskbar: The Quick Launch Taskbar is a collection of one-click programs. In most Windows displays the Taskbar is a horizontal area at the bottom of the display, but some users change its location. Select: Select means to move the mouse pointer over an object and click the left mouse button once. Double click: Double click means to move the mouse pointer over an object and click the left mouse button twice. Document: A word processing Document is a computer file that contains text and style information. Page 14 of 80

15 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Lesson 2 - Formatting Text LibreOffice Writer Display Features: To learn how to do more than simple typing and printing requires that you know some basic display features and functions of LibreOffice Writer. Take a few minutes to review the different parts of the LibreOffice Writer display. You can learn a lot about how to use LibreOffice Writer by simply examining the different things that are there to enhance your word processing. If it is not already on your display, Open the document named My Lesson 1 Document. To open a document from within LibreOffice, select the word File from the Menu Bar, hover over Recent Documents from the pop down menu, then move the mouse pointer and select My Lesson 1 document from the pop out menu. From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, adjust the folder and enter My Lesson 2 document as the file name. This step preserves the original document and creates a new document with a new file name. This is a handy trick when you want to experiment without changing the original document. You are probably anxious to get on with creating and formatting text. Please be patient. Spending a little extra time at this point will save you tons of grief and speed up your work later. Figure 2-1: Creating a new document using File, Save As. Page 15 of 80

16 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Figure 2-2: LibreOffice Writer Display Features. Your display should look similar to that shown in Figure 2-2. It also identifies the different parts of the display. Try to remember the names of the different parts of the display. They will be referred to in future steps. You may want to refer back to Figure 2-2 from time to time to refresh you memory about the parts of the LibreOffice Writer display. Beginning word processing users sometimes get frustrated and feel lost because of the strange vocabulary used by software programmers. You will get along better if you learn the meanings of the words as they apply to the LibreOffice program. Title Bar: The top horizontal line on the display is called the Title Bar. This is common to all Windows software. It contains the name of the program window (LibreOffice Writer), and the name of the document file that is active. Menu Bar: The second horizontal line on the display is the Menu Bar. If you position the mouse pointer on a word on the Menu Bar and click the left mouse button once, a list of menu choices will pop down. This provides access to various program tools. These will be discussed as they are needed. Galaxy Tool Bar: The third horizontal line is the Galaxy Tool Bar. There are other LibreOffice Tool Bar styles available. If your Tool Bar looks different from the example, you may want to go through Appendix A, and adjust your display settings to those used in these lessons. Page 16 of 80

17 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Tool Tip: If you position the mouse pointer over a tool and hover there for a bit, a Tool Tip will appear for a short time. The Tool Tip provides a hint as to what the tool is for. Text Formatting Tool Bar: The fourth horizontal line on the display is the Text Formatting Tool Bar. This is used to control the font style, alignment, and other text properties. The Text Formatting Tool Bar is what is known as a context sensitive Tool Bar. The Tool Bar in this area changes depending on what is happening. When the text cursor is on the display, the Text Formatting Tool Bar appears. If a graphic object is selected, the Graphics Tool Bar appears. Properties Sidebar The Properties Sidebar has several sections. These will be explored in later lessons. Text Margin: The Text Margin shows the area of the page available for text. There is a page formatting option where the margins can be adjusted. Page Boundary: The white rectangle shows the Page Boundary. Page Count: The Page Count shows the page where the text cursor is currently located, and also shows the total number of pages in the document. Word Count: The Word Count shows how many words and characters are in the current document. Drawing Tool Bar: The Drawing Tool Bar is used to add graphics, pictures and drawing objects, to the document. It can be toggled on or off. Page Zoom: The Page Zoom control has a slider that can be dragged to zoom out or in on the page. The and + signs at either end of the Page Zoom control can be selected to decrease or increase the zoom factor. Keep in mind that the Page Zoom factor does not control how the page will look when printed. If you want the text on your page to appear larger for easy reading, do not change the font size. Simply zoom in and out on the display. Before messing with the appearance of the document, we need to review some of the basic differences between typewriters and word processors. The characters on typewriters each take exactly the same width on a page. To look their best in a printed page, different characters should have different widths. In the old days this was done by typesetters who picked letters out of a box and lined them up in a printing press to form words. This was a very time-consuming process, but it allowed for better-looking print. After all, the letter W should not take the same amount of space as the letter I. Typewriters were stuck with same width characters, and used blank spaces and carriage returns to format pages. Word processing software replaces the limited typewriter formatting and the old slow typesetter. In fact, word processing software has put typesetters out of business. Page 17 of 80

18 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Word processors use what are called proportional fonts. This means that a w is not the same width as an i. This is where experienced typists can get frustrated with word processing. With the typewriter you could line up columns of text by using spaces or tabs. The same number of spaces always aligned nicely with a similar number of characters because on a typewriter all characters are the same width. Proportional Fonts: In word processing, different characters, or letters, have different widths. The set of characters that have different widths are referred to as Proportional Fonts. With word processors, we do not rely on spaces to align things since a space character is not the same width as all of the other characters. If this idea bothers you, don't despair. Formatting text with a word processor will give you power and speed beyond the wildest dreams of an experienced typist. One nice thing is that you no longer need a bottle of white out to fix typos. Editing on the display will save lots of paper. You do have to learn some basic tricks. One trick you need to know is how to move the cursor around the document without using the mouse. Moving the Text Cursor: Text Cursor: The Text Cursor is a flashing vertical line somewhere in the body of the text where the mouse pointer has been positioned when the left mouse button was clicked. The cursor control keys are the 4 arrow keys to the right of the main part of most keyboards. Observe the location of the Text Cursor. Press the different cursor control keys on the keyboard and watch how the Text Cursor moves around. Practice using the cursor control keys until you can position the text cursor exactly where you want it. Most people can position the Text Cursor more precisely using the cursor control keys than they can using the mouse. Figure 2-3: The cursor control keys. Here is a trick for jumping to the beginning or end of a line. Note that there are keys just above the cursor control keys that are marked Home and End. Position the Text Cursor on a line somewhere in the middle of the document. Press the Home key and watch the Text Cursor jump to the beginning of the line. Press the End key and watch the Text Cursor jump to the end of the line. A combination key press will jump to the beginning or end of the document. To jump to the beginning of a document, hold the Ctrl key down and, while holding it down, press the Home key. (In the future this will be stated press Ctrl+Home. Page 18 of 80

19 Lesson 2 Formatting Text To jump to the end of a document, press Ctrl+End. By now you probably have noticed that the mouse pointer changes shape as you move it over different areas of the computer display. When you move the mouse pointer over areas outside of the text on the display it has the shape of a pointer, while when it is over the text in a document it changes to an I. The I shape helps you select a precise location for the Text Cursor. You can also use the mouse to control the Text Cursor location. Move the mouse pointer to a new location in the text and click the left mouse button once to place the Text Cursor at that location. Practice positioning the Text Cursor using the mouse. Selecting text: Text that is currently selected will be highlighted. Editing, or changing, text Figure 2-4: Observe the selected text. requires that you be able to accurately select the part of the text to be edited. There are several selection tricks available for use. These selection tricks requires a bit of mouse button clicking dexterity. Double click means to quickly click the left mouse button twice. To select a single word, position the Text Cursor somewhere in the word and double click. Practice selecting words until you can do it easily. Triple click means to quickly click the left mouse button three times. To select a complete sentence, position the mouse pointer somewhere in the sentence and triple click. Practice selecting sentences until you can do it easily. The next trick is a little harder. Quadruple click means to quickly click the left mouse button four times. To select a complete paragraph, position the mouse pointer somewhere in the paragraph and quadruple click. Practice selecting paragraphs until you can do it easily. Shift click means to position the Text Cursor at the beginning point of the selection, hold the shift key down, and while holding the shift key down move the mouse pointer to the end of the selection and click the left mouse button once. To make an extended text selection use the shift click option. Page 19 of 80

20 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Practice using the shift click option until you can accurately select text. You can also select text by clicking and dragging. This means to position the mouse pointer at the beginning point of the selection, click and hold the left mouse button down, and move the mouse pointer to the end of the desired selection. The problem with clicking and dragging is that it is very easy to drag selected text to a new location by mistake, and this can be hard to fix. I avoid the click and drag option. To de-select text, move the mouse pointer to an unselected location and click the left mouse button once. Here is one last text selection trick. Ctrl+A means to hold the Ctrl key down and, while holding it down, press the A key. To select all of the text in a document, press Ctrl+A. Practice using Ctrl+A to select all text until it is easy to do. Go back and review and practice all of the different methods for selecting text. Formatting Marks characters: In computer slanguage, characters include the alphabet, numbers, punctuation marks, and so on. There are also several characters that do not appear when a document is printed. When you press keys like Enter, the Space Bar, or the Tab key, you are actually adding more characters to the document. It is very helpful to be able to see these Formatting Marks characters on the display because they show exactly how a document is formatted. Figure 2-5 shows the symbols for 3 Formatting Marks characters: 3 Tab key presses, 10 Spaces, and 5 Enter key presses. See if you can identify the non-printing character symbols in Figure 2-5. There is a tool that toggles the display of Formatting Marks characters on and off. Figure 2-5: Formatting Marks characters. From the Tool Bar, select the Formatting Marks tool. (See Figure 2-6.) The Formatting Marks tool is a toggle. This means that each time it is selected it switches between on and off. When the Formatting Marks tool is on, the Formatting Marks characters appear on the display. Page 20 of 80

21 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Many beginners find the display of Formatting Marks characters a bit annoying. However, I do not like to work with it off, because I cannot see how things are formatted. If you ever printed a document and wondered why an extra empty page goes through the printer, it is because you have extra blank paragraph that extend to a new page. The Formatting Marks character display will reveal those blank paragraphs. Figure 2-6: Formatting and Preview toggles. If you want to see how your document looks without showing the Formatting Marks characters, select the Page Preview tool. The Undo tool: This is a good time to mention the Undo tool found on the Tool Bar. Whenever you do one or more things that you wish you had not done, worry not! Just select the Undo tool one or more times to return to the previous state of your document. There is also a Redo tool (just to the right of the Undo tool) in case you Undo too much. Figure 2-7: Undo and Redo. Formatting text: When you first start a new document in LibreOffice Writer it uses what are called default settings. There are three different settings in use whenever you add text to a document: Paragraph style, Font type, and character Size. The settings used for My Lesson 1 Document were the Default paragraph style; the Liberation Serif font type, Page 21 of 80

22 Len s Introduction to Word Processing and 12 point type size. The currently active settings are shown on the left side of the Text Formatting Tool Bar. Observe that the right sides of the three format options shown have a tiny down pointing arrow on the right side of each tool. When this arrow is selected, a pop down list will show additional choices. Figure 2-8 shows that the formatting styles also appear on the Sidebar. The Sidebar can be toggled on and off by selecting from the Menu Bar View, Sidebar. Remember that a paragraph in word processing can be several Figure 2-8: Default styles. sentences, a single sentence, a single word, or no words at all. Every paragraph in a LibreOffice Writer document has a paragraph style. Let's change the paragraph style used in My Lesson 2 Document. Changing the paragraph style: Note the Figure 2-9 example following the next several steps. With My Lesson 2 document on the display, press Ctrl+A to select all of the text. Select the small arrow to the right of the Paragraph Style section of the (see Figure 2-9). Figure 2-9: Changing the paragraph style. Select Text Body from the pop down menu. Move the mouse pointer to somewhere outside the text body and click the left mouse button once to de-select the text. Page 22 of 80

23 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Observe that there is now extra space between paragraphs. This is because the Text Body paragraph style commands the computer to place a specific amount of space after each paragraph. Typists used multiple carriage returns to put space between lines and paragraphs. This is not necessary and not desirable when using word processing software. If you want to change line spacing, there are ways to change paragraph spacing for an entire document with a couple of clicks. These tricks will be covered in a future lesson. Next, the font style will be changed on some text. Bold, Italic, and Underline: Remember how to use the shift click method to select words? If not go back and review the Selecting Text section. In the first paragraph, select the words LibreOffice Writer. In the Formatting Tool Bar [or in the sidebar], select the Bold tool. Note that the Bold, Italic, and Underline tools are toggles. Each time they are selected, the selected character style will switched. NOTE: when the settings in the Text Formatting Tool Bar are changed, the change will only apply to text that is currently selected, or to text that is added at the current cursor location after the change is made. Just to the right of the Bold tool in the Format Tool Bar, you will find the Italic and Underline tools. These tools are also toggles. In the first paragraph, select the words enter key. In the Formatting Tool Bar [or in the sidebar], select the Bold and Italic tools. With the words enter key still selected, select from the Menu Bar, Format, Text, Uppercase (see Figure 2-10). Figure 2-10: Changing text to UPPERCASE. Observe that there are text style changing options in LibreOffice Writer. These operate on currently selected text. If (like me) you accidentally hit the Caps Lock key and then Page 23 of 80

24 Len s Introduction to Word Processing type for a while before you notice, the Format, Text tool will enable you to fix an entire selection without the need to delete and retype. Indenting Paragraphs: In the next step, you will see how to indent an entire paragraph in one step. With the Text Cursor anywhere in the second paragraph, select the Increase Indent tool (see Figure 211). Note that each time you select the Increase Indent tool, the amount the current paragraph is indented will increase. Also there is a Decrease Indent tool that removes the indent. Changing font style and size: Press Ctrl+Home to move the cursor to the beginning of the first paragraph, and then press the Enter key to add a new paragraph before the current first Figure 2-11: Increase Indent tool. paragraph. Press Ctrl+Home to move the cursor to the beginning of the new paragraph and type My Document Title. Select the My Document Title text. With the My Document Title text selected, make the My Document Title text Bold. With the My Document Title text selected, change the font style to Ariel. With the My Document Title text selected, change the font size to 18. Aligning paragraphs: With the text cursor in the title paragraph, select the Centered tool from the Text Formatting Tool Bar. The selected words should now be centered in your document. Figure 2-12: Centering Text Page 24 of 80

25 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Observe that there are several paragraph alignment options. (See Figure 2-13.) If you have ever tried to do center alignment in an old type writer, you will appreciate these tools. Trying to do right or justified alignment on a typewriter is basically impossible. However, with word processing you can switch between different alignment options with a click of the mouse. Figure 2-13: Paragraph alignment options. Never spend more times between saves than you are willing to spend again if the document is lost, or completely messed up. Saving the document file: It is time to save the changes to your document. If you followed the earlier steps you have preserved the original Lesson 1 version of the document by saving the current version of the document with a new name. The Title Bar shows the current document name. Figure 2-14: Paragraph tools If your Title Bar shows the My Lesson 1 Document, do the next two steps. If it shows the My Lesson 2 Document, simply select the Save tool on the Tool Bar to update the file. From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As. In the Save As dialog box, enter My Lesson 2 Document as the file name, then select the Save button. Page 25 of 80

26 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Observe that the Title Bar shows the name of the current document after doing a File Save As operation. Font color, highlighting, and background color: Next, the Font Color, Highlighting, and Background tools will be explored. With the words My Document Title selected, select the small down pointing arrow on the right edge of the Font Color tool and change the color to Red. Figure 2-15: Changing font color. In the last paragraph, select the words There are a number of ways to move the Text Cursor. Then select the small down pointing arrow on the right edge of the Highlight color tool and change the color to Light Yellow 4. Figure 2-16: Changing highlight color. Place the Text Cursor anywhere in the first (My Document Title) paragraph, then select the Paragraph Background Color tool and change the color to Light Blue 4. (See Figure 2-17.) Page 26 of 80

27 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Next, several new paragraphs will be added to demonstrate some more formatting options. Bullets and lists: Press Ctrl+End to move the Text Cursor to the end of the document. Press the Enter key to start a new paragraph. With the Text Cursor in the last (empty) paragraph, type the words This paragraph uses bullets, and do not press the Figure 2-17: Paragraph Background Color tool. Enter key. From the Text Formatting Tool Bar, and with the Text Cursor at the end of the This paragraph uses bullets paragraph, select the Toggle Bulleted List tool. (See Figure 2-17.) Press the Enter key and add a new paragraph with the words This paragraph also uses bullets. Press the Enter key twice. Observe that when you press the enter key to end a paragraph with bullets, the following paragraph will also have bullets. If you press the enter key again without adding text, the paragraph style will revert to no bullets. The Toggle Bulleted List tool is a toggle. If you select it with the cursor in a paragraph that has bullets, the bullets will be turned off. If you select it with the cursor in a paragraph that does not bullets, bullets will be added. Numbered Lists The last formatting to be applied will demonstrate a numbered list. With the Text Cursor on the last empty line of your document, enter the word One and then select the Toggle Numbered List tool from the Text Formatting Tool Bar. Press the Enter key and type List again followed by the Enter key. Type Another list paragraph, Enter, Maybe this is not in the list, Enter, This is in the list, Enter, Enter. You should now have a list numbered from 1 through 5. Next, one of the lines will have the list number turned off. Move the Text Cursor to the line that has the text Maybe this is not in the list. Select the Toggle Numbered List tool from the Formatting Tool Bar. Page 27 of 80

28 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Your document should now appear similar to Figure You should get into the habit of saving your document often. From the Tool Bar, select the Save tool. Note that when you have saved a document, the Save tool will appear plain until you make new changes to the document. When a document has been changed, a sunburst will be added to the Save tool. This provides a visual clue as to whether you have saved the current version. Figure 2-18: Bullets and numbered lists. Figure 2-19: Saved vs Unsaved documents. This completes a tour of some of the Formatting Text options in LibreOffice. There have been a lot of concepts covered in this lesson. It is more than most folks can remember in only one trip through. To get the most out of this lesson, start a brand new document and go through this lesson again. I know, I know, this seems like a lot of work. But if you were tasking piano lessons you would expect to practice each piece more than once. Learning word processing is like learning to play the piano. It takes a bit of practice to become good at it. After going through this lesson again, you should Select File New, Text Document from the Menu Bar, create a new text document of your own, and practice the various formatting options. Page 28 of 80

29 Lesson 2 Formatting Text Points to remember: White-out is a thing of the past. Don't worry about typing precisely the first time. Get the content down while the thoughts are fresh and then edit any typos later. Word processors use proportional fonts. This means that you cannot rely on typing spaces to align things. Use paragraph styles to control text formatting. If you want to align rows and columns of text (such as a price list for example), you should use a table (discussed in a later lesson) that will keep things aligned for you. This paragraph uses bullets, but it also uses something called a hanging indent. That means that lines in the paragraph after the first line are indented more than the first line. Creating custom paragraph styles will be covered in a later chapter. Let LibreOffice Writer take care of spacing for you. Paragraph styles automatically include the amount of space before, after, above, and below, paragraphs and the space between lines within paragraphs. These tricks will be covered in later lessons. You should enter all of the text into your documents first and worry about style and appearance after you have the words in place. Use the cursor control keys to move the text cursor precisely around the document. Press End to jump to the end of a line. Press Ctrl+End to jump to the end of a document. Press Home to jump to the beginning of a line. Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the beginning of a document. Double click on a word to select the word. Triple click to select a complete sentence. Quadruple click to select a complete paragraph. Toggle the Formatting Marks tool on the Galaxy Tool Bar to reveal the location of spaces, tabs, and enter key non-printing characters. Use the Text Formatting Tool Bar [Or the Sidebar] to control font styles and placement. Use the Text Formatting Tool Bar [Or the Sidebar] to control font color, highlighting, and background color. Use the Undo tool to fix a mistake. Page 29 of 80

30 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Page 30 of 80

31 Lesson 3 Paragraph Styles Lesson 3 Paragraph Styles The Concept Of Styles: Styles: In the context of LibreOffice Writer, Styles refers to the characteristics of a part of a document. For example, a Page Style includes information about page size, layout (portrait or landscape), margins, columns, background color, and more. A Paragraph Style includes information about indents and spacing, alignment, font, borders, and more. Casual word processing users adjust things like page margins and page layout manually, and have to repeat making these adjustments on every new page and every new document. However, to enjoy the time savings and power available in LibreOffice Writer you must learn how to use and control document styles. The concept of styles is critical to unleashing the power of desktop publishing. In this lesson, creating Paragraph Styles will be discussed. However, the idea of styles applies to other aspects of documents. Once you understand how to adjust Paragraph Styles, you will have a head start on knowing how to use Page, Character, and Frame Styles. The idea of styles is that different parts of a document share similar characteristics (like font size, spacing between lines, background color, and more). By storing these characteristics in collections of Styles, it is possible to quickly change or adjust everything in a document Creating Custom Paragraph Styles: One of the biggest differences between typing and word processing is the notion of paragraphs and paragraph styles. In Lesson 2 you saw how to change a paragraph style in your document from Default to Text Body. In this Lesson, you will learn how to create your own custom paragraph styles. Figure 3-1: The View, Sidebar option. Open the LibreOffice Writer program. From the Menu Bar, select View and note if the Sidebar option is ON. [See Figure 3-1] (If it is off, toggle it ON.) From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, adjust the Save in: location to your preferred folder, and then enter the file name My Poem. The Sidebar (see Figure 3-2) has 7 display options. The Properties option duplicates most of the tools found in the text Formatting tool bar. This was used to change font style and size in an earlier lesson. In the current lesson, we will focus on the Styles and Formatting option. In particular, you will see how to create custom paragraph styles. Page 31 of 80

32 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Toggle the Styles and Formatting option ON in the Sidebar (See Figure 3-2). The Sidebar has 7 different options; Properties, Page, Styles and Formatting, Gallery, Navigator, Manage Changes, and Design. Figure 3-2: Styles and Formatting Sidebar options. Figure 3-3 shows the different styles that are available in the Styles and Formatting option of the Sidebar. There are a lot of different styles options available, but don t worry about trying to remember all of them. We will focus just on Paragraph styles in this lesson. Figure 3-3: The Styles and Formatting options. Figure 3-4 shows the My Poem document with no Custom Paragraph styles yet defined. (You will add some text to your poem after some styles have been created.) Observe that the Text Formatting Toolbar shows that the Default Paragraph Style is in use. Figure 3-4: Preparing to create a new Paragraph style. Page 32 of 80

33 Lesson 3 Paragraph Styles Two new paragraph styles will be created. One for the title and the other for the poem text body. The Styles and Formatting Sidebar has a row of tools across the top (see Figure 3-3). The first tool on the left is the Paragraph Styles tool. When this tool has been selected, a list of paragraph styles appears in the Window. The bottom of the dialog box has a list box that controls the category of styles shown. In this example, we will limit the list to Custom Styles. Creating a Text Body Style Select the arrow on the lower right side of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and then select the Custom Styles option. From the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Paragraph Style tool. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting box and select New from the pop up menu. This opens the Paragraph Style dialog box. Observe that there are a number of tabs across the top of the Paragraph Style dialog box. The first step in creating a new paragraph style is to name the style. In the Paragraph Style dialog box, select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Figure 3-5: The Paragraph Styles dialog box. Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Poem Body. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Poem Body. In the Inherit from area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and use the scrolling list to select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Page 33 of 80

34 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Next, the Alignment and Font options will be set for the My Poem Body Paragraph style. Select the Indents & Spacing tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Spacing, Above paragraph to Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Center. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Since some installed programs add fonts, the exact list of fonts in your computer will depend on what programs have been installed (See Figure 3-6). Figure 3-6: Creating a new Paragraph Style. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the poem text. (In this example, Antique, Bold, 24pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select OK to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Now that a paragraph style has been created for a poem body, a second style will be created for the poem title. Creating a Title Style Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Poem Title. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the scroll arrow to select My Poem Body. In the Inherit from area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and use the scrolling list to select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and set the Alignment to Center. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and select a Font, Typeface and Size for the poem text. (In this example, Antique, Bold, 36pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the Font Effects tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Toggle the Shadow effect ON. Page 34 of 80

35 Lesson 3 Paragraph Styles Select OK to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Now that the paragraph styles for the poem have been established, it is time to write a poem. Here is a poem for you to add to the document. If you wish, substitute your own poem verses. With the Text Cursor on the first line of the My Poem document, double click on the My Poem Title style in the Styles and Formatting Sidebar. Enter My First Poem on the first line of the document and then press the Enter key twice. Then enter the following paragraphs (or a poem of your own). Press the Enter key to insert the blank paragraphs shown. It has not been read in Rome It has not been read in Nome It is not about a fellow Or about the color yellow It is not fit to publish But is only poet rubbish Observe that you set the paragraph style to My Poem Title for the first line, but as soon as you pressed the Enter key, the paragraph style changed to My Poem Body. This is because when the My Poem Title was created, the next style was set to My Poem Body. This trick can save a lot of time. Next you will see the power of using Paragraph Styles. Right click on the My Poem Body style in the Sidebar and select the Modify option.. This will open the Paragraph Style dialog box for the My Poem Body style. Change to a different font and Figure 3-7: Modifying Paragraph Styles. font size. Then select the Apply button. If you want to save the modifications, select the OK button. You can modify any of the Paragraph Style settings and change all of the paragraphs in a document that use this style. The point to remember is that when you are using word processing (as opposed to using a typewriter) you can focus on creating the text for your Page 35 of 80

36 Len s Introduction to Word Processing document. After you have created the text you can worry about formatting the appearance of the document. If you create things like newsletters or signs, or announcements where you want to use a similar style for multiple documents, you can migrate paragraph and other styles to new documents. Now that you have created a poem, it is time to save it. Since you already created the file name for this document in an earlier step, you can use the Save tool to update the contents of the document. From the Tool Bar, select the Save tool. Now it is time for you to experiment. From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As and enter a new file name to create a new document. This new document will have the Paragraph Styles of the original. Replace the title and lines with your own poem. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, right click on the My Poem Body paragraph style, select Modify, and change the font characteristics. Repeat the previous step for the My Poem Title style. To get the most out of this lesson, open a brand new text document, and go back through this lesson again, word by word, from the beginning. Remember, if you were learning to play the piano, you would practice each piece more than once. The same drill and practice technique will help develop word processing skills faster than trying to do too much too soon. If you rush, there will not be enough soak time for the new information to be absorbed. To see fonts installed on a Windows 10 computer, set File Explorer to Local Disk, Windows, Fonts. Page 36 of 80

37 Lesson 4 Page Styles Lesson 4 Page Styles The Concept of Styles: Styles: In the context of LibreOffice Writer, Styles refers to the characteristics of a part of a document. For example, a Page Style includes information about page size, layout (portrait or landscape), margins, columns, background color, and more. A Paragraph Style includes information about indents and spacing, alignment, font, borders, and more. In Lesson 3, custom paragraph styles were created. In this lesson, new Page Styles will be created. Remember, the idea of styles applies to several aspects of documents. Once you understand how to adjust Paragraph and Page Styles, you will have a head start on knowing how to create and use Character, Frame, List and Table Styles. Styles can be easily moved from one document to another, so the work setting up styles for a document need not be repeated. Footer: A Footer is an area at the bottom of a page reserved for material that is not part of the regular document body text flow. Header: A Header is an area at the top of a page reserved for material that is not part of the regular document body text flow. All left side (or even numbered) pages in this Lesson 4 document have page numbers that are left justified, while all right side (or odd numbered) pages have page numbers that are right justified. This document has been designed to be printed on both sides of the paper, so the margins are different on left and right pages to accommodate binding. The page numbers will be on the outside edge of the pages as the reader leafs through the document. The Lesson 4 document you are reading right now has one page appearance for the first page in the chapter, and different headers and footers for the following left and right pages. By creating special styles for left and right pages, the formatting for new pages is automatically taken care of by the system. If the author wants to change the appearance of all pages in a document, she simply changes the page style definitions and the entire document is automatically updated with the new style. Creating custom page styles will be introduced in this lesson. The Styles and Formatting Sidebar provides tools for controlling styles. Additional styles will be covered in later chapters. Formatting page styles: Documents that will be printed (as opposed to those that only appear on web pages or in e-books) will have margins of a specific size, and may include headers and footers. It is not unusual to have different formats for the first page in a document, or for left and right pages (when double-sided printing will be used). This section will review the options for controlling page styles and for creating new custom page styles. Open the file named My Lesson 1. Page 37 of 80

38 Len s Introduction to Word Processing From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, adjust the Save in: location to your preferred folder. Enter the name My Lesson 4 in the File Name text box and then select the Save button. This creates a new document and if you check the Title Bar you will see the file name displayed. The original document file will still be stored in the computer. If the Sidebar sidebar is not open, select View, Sidebar. [You can also press the F11 shortcut key on the keyboard to toggle the Styles and Formatting Sidebar.] In the Sidebar, select the Styles and Formatting option. (See Figure 4-1.) Figure 4-1: Selecting the Page Styles option. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Page option (see Figure 4-2). When you pause the mouse cursor over a tool icon, a Tool Tip will appear that will describe the tool function. If Custom Styles does not appear at the bottom of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select it from the list. Next, you will create some custom page styles of your own. First, a quick review of some LibreOffice Writer display info. Figure 4-2: The Page Styles option. Please review the page display info as shown in Figure 4-3. Near the lower left corner of the LibreOffice Writer display is the Page Count area. This shows the current page and the total number of pages in the document. Page 38 of 80

39 Lesson 4 Page Styles To the right of the page number is the Word Count. To the right of word count is the current Page Style. The example shows that the Default page style is in use. The Page Display tool allows for displaying a single page, two pages side by side, or book mode which shows left and right pages as they would appear when the pages are printed double sided for a book. Hover your mouse pointer over each of these options to see the Tool Tips. Near the lower right corner of the Figure 4-3: Page display info and options. LibreOffice Writer display are the Zoom Tools. There is a tiny on the left side of the slider, a tiny + on the right end of the slider, and a slider zoom grabber near the center of the slider line. To the right of the zoom slider is a number that shows the current display magnification. Note that display magnification, or zoom, only controls how big the document looks on the computer monitor. It does not have any effect on font size or how the document will look when it is printed. Creating new page styles: In this section, three new page styles will be created. To see the application of different styles, there has to be enough text to fill three pages. Copy and Paste will be used to add duplicate text to your My Lesson 4 Document file. With the text cursor in the My Lesson 4 Document, Press Ctrl+End to jump to the end of the document. Press the Enter key a couple of times to add blank paragraphs to the end of the document. Press Ctrl+A to select all the text in the document. In the Text Formatting Tool Bar, change the Paragraph Style to Text Body. Press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to the clipboard. Press Ctrl+End to jump to the end of the document. Press Ctrl+V to paste a copy of the clipboard text to the end of the document. Repeat the Ctrl+V step until the Page Count shows 3 pages. Select the Save tool from the Tool Bar to update your document. Now that you have several pages in your document, three new page styles will be created. One style will be for the first page of a document, the second will be for left side (or Page 39 of 80

40 Len s Introduction to Word Processing even numbered) pages, and the third page style will be for right side (or odd numbered) pages. Creating a left side page style If the Styles and Formatting tools are not on the Sidebar, select the Styles and Formatting tool from the Sidebar options (see Figure 4-1). Select the Page Styles tool in the Styles and Formatting Sidebar. Select the small arrow at the lower right corner of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, then select Custom Styles from the scroll list. There will not be any page styles shown in the list until some are created. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. This will open the Page Style dialog box. Observe that there are tabs across the top of the dialog box that provide access to various style settings. With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter My Left Pages as the Name. Select the small arrow on the right side of the Next style text box and select My Left Pages from the scroll list. The Next style tells the system what page style to use for the following page when the current page is filled with text. In a later step, this will be changed to My Right Pages after that style has been defined. But first, there is a bit more work to do with the first page style. With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.75 for the Right margins. If you press the TAB key when the text cursor is in an entry box, the system will jump to the next box and highlight the contents. You can then type a new value in the entry box and tab to the next. Figure 4-4: Creating a left page style. With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.5 for the Left, Top, and Bottom margins. Page 40 of 80

41 Lesson 4 Page Styles With the Header tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Header option ON. With the Footer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Footer option ON. Select OK in the Page Style dialog box. This defines a style for the left pages of the document. The process will be repeated for right and title pages. Since these formats are being designed for two sided printing, a larger space for the binding will be on the left side of the first and right pages, and on the right side of left side pages. Creating a right side page style Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter My Right Pages as the Name. Select the small arrow on the right side of the Next style text box and select My Left Pages from the scroll list. With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.75 for the Left margins. With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.5 for the Right, Top, and Bottom margins. With the Header tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Header option ON. With the Footer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Footer option ON. Select OK in the Page Style dialog box. Creating a first page style There is one more page style to create. This style will be used for the first page of the document and will include a header, and a footer. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter My First Page as the Name. Select the small arrow on the right side of the Next style text box and select My Left Pages from the scroll list. With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.75 for the Left margins. With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.5 for the Right, Top, and Bottom margins. Page 41 of 80

42 Len s Introduction to Word Processing With the Header tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Header option ON. Select OK in the Page Style dialog box. Now we have to go back and change the Next Page setting for the left pages. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, right click on My Left Pages and select Modify from the pop up context menu. With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, select the small arrow on the right side of the Next style text box and select My Right Pages from the scroll list. Select OK in the Page Style dialog box. If everything has gone according to plan, you should now have 3 custom pages defined; My First Page, My Right Pages, and My Left Pages. The right and left pages should have both headers and footers, and the first page should have only a header. One nice thing about defining page styles is that you can easily change the page styles for an entire document. For example, suppose you wanted different margins on pages. All you have to do is modify the page styles and the entire document will be instantly reformatted. Next, let's apply the page styles to the My Lesson 4 Document. Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the beginning of the document. Position the text cursor anywhere on page one. Double click on the My First Page entry in the Page Styles list. Select the Save button on the Tool Bar to update your document file. Your page should now have a header area at the top of the page. Observe that the bottom of the display shows both the current page number and also the name of the Page Style used for the current page. Next, a title will be added to the header. Defining headers and footers: Let's put some text in the headers and footers. Position the text cursor in the first page header. Enter My Lesson Four Title Position the text cursor in the header of the second page. Enter the text This is a left page header. Position the text cursor in the header of the third page. Enter the text This is a right page header. Page 42 of 80

43 Lesson 4 Page Styles Inserting Fields: Next, we will add page numbers to the footers. Adjust your display so that the page 2 footer is in view. Click the mouse cursor in the footer box. Type the word Page followed by a space. From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Field, Page Number. Type a space followed by the word of followed by another space. From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Field, Page Count. Figure 4-5: Inserting fields. Your footer contents should look similar to that shown in Figure 4-6. Observe the page number and style for the page where the text cursor is located. Note that fields that are inserted will be shown with a gray background and cannot be edited. The gray background will not show in a printed copy. Select all of the text in the page 2 footer, then press Ctrl+C (or Figure 4-6: Inserting fields in a footer. select Edit, Copy) Adjust your display so that the page 3 footer is in view. Click the mouse cursor in the page 3 footer box, then press Ctrl+V (or select Edit, Paste). Select the Save button on the Tool Bar to update your document file. Now it's time to review the process of creating custom paragraph styles and create styles for the title, body, headers and footers. Page 43 of 80

44 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Creating a custom Title paragraph style: From the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Paragraph Style tool (see Figure 4-2). Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. Select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Title Paragraph. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Title Paragraph. In the Inherit from text box of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Center. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Times New Roman, Bold, 20pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the Font Effects tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and select the Shadow effect. Select the Area tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, select the Color option, and then select the Light Yellow 2 color. Select the Borders tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and select the Set Top and Bottom borders option. Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Now let's apply the paragraph style to the title header. Figure 4-7: Creating a title paragraph style. Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the top of the document. Place the text cursor anywhere in the first page header. Double click on the My Title Paragraph style in the Sidebar. Page 44 of 80

45 Lesson 4 Page Styles Creating a custom Text Body paragraph style: From the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Paragraph Style tool. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. Select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Text Body Paragraph. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Text Body Paragraph. In the Inherit from text box of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Indents & Spacing tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the First Line spacing to Set the spacing Below paragraph to Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Left. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Times New Roman, Regular, 14pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Place the text cursor in the body of a page. Press Ctrl+A to select all of the text. Double click on the My Text Body Paragraph style. Use the scroll bar on the right side of the page and observe that the text in the entire document is now using the My Text Body Paragraph style. The beauty of this is that you can now change the font and spacing of the entire document simply by modifying the paragraph style. This is powerful stuff. While we are at it, we might as well create paragraph styles of the headers and footers. Creating custom Header paragraph styles: Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. Select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Left Header Paragraph. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Left Header Paragraph. In the Inherit from text box of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None. Page 45 of 80

46 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Left. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Ariel, Bold,10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Place the text cursor in the left header of a page. Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Place the text cursor in the page 2 header. Double click on the My Left Header Paragraph style. Next, the right header style will be created. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. Select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Right Header Paragraph. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Right Header Paragraph. In the Inherit from text box of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Right. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Arial, Bold,10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Place the text cursor in a right page header. Double click on the My Right Header Paragraph style. Creating custom Footer paragraph styles: From the Sidebar, select the Paragraph Style tool. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. Select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Left Footer Paragraph. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Left Footer Paragraph. Page 46 of 80

47 Lesson 4 Page Styles In the Inherit from text box of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Left. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the left footer. (In this example, Arial, Regular, 10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Place the text cursor in the page 2 footer. Double click on the My Left Footer Paragraph style. Last, the right footer will be created. From the Sidebar, select the Paragraph Style tool. Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu. Select the Organizer tab. In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Right Footer Paragraph. In the Next style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Right Footer Figure 4-8: The custom paragraph styles. Paragraph. In the Inherit from text box of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None. Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made. Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Set the Alignment to Right. Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box. Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Arial, Bold, 10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.) Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box. Place the text cursor in the page 3 footer. Double click on the My Right Footer Paragraph style. Page 47 of 80

48 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Save the document. This was a lot of busy work, but you never have to do it again. Whenever you want to start a new multi-page document, start by opening your Lesson 4 Document, use File, Save As to create a new document, then edit the text body and title. The formatting for paragraphs and pages follows the original document. Points to remember: Use the Styles and Formatting Sidebar to select or modify the styles of Paragraphs, Characters, Frames, Pages, and Lists. Each page will be followed by a page that has a style defined as Next Page in the Page Style dialog box. A page may or may not have either a Header or a Footer. Fields can be inserted that contain page numbers or a page count. Fields are also available for Time, Date, and other functions. Page 48 of 80

49 Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames In this lesson you will learn how to create a new document that imports the custom page and paragraph styles created in earlier lessons. You will also see how to add tables to your documents. If LibreOffice Writer is not running, start it. If it is already running close any open documents using File, Close, and then Open a new document. From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, and set the Save In folder to a known location. Enter Lesson 5 Class News as the file name. From the Menu Bar, select File, Properties. With the Description tab selected, enter Lesson 5 Class News as the Title. Importing custom styles: Next, the custom formats will be imported from the My Lesson 4 Document file. Open the Sidebar and select the Styles and Formatting option. [Press F11 or select View, Sidebar from the Menu Bar.] In the Sidebar, select the New Style from Selection tool, then select Load Styles from the pop up menu. Observe that the Load Styles dialog box provides options for loading styles from Templates. You can create different templates and store them for future use. There are also standard templates available on the web site. Rather than using a template in this example, you will load styles from your Lesson 4 document. Make sure that the following options along the bottom of the Load Styles dialog box, Text, Frame, Pages, Numbering, and Overwrite, are all checked. Select the From File button, Figure 5-1: The Load Styles dialog box. select your My Lesson 4 Document file, and then select the Open button. This procedure will import the custom styles and formats from the My Lesson 4 Document file and make them part of the Class News file. At this point the Styles and Formatting custom paragraph styles should show the Custom Styles from your earlier document as seen in Figure 5-2. Page 49 of 80

50 Len s Introduction to Word Processing If you think about this for a minute, you will realize that a word processing document file contains more than just words. It also contains background information about style settings and other mysterious stuff. Now that your custom styles are available, they can be used in the new document. With the text cursor in the body of the Class News document, and with the Page Styles tool selected in the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, double click on the My First Page format. Place the text cursor in the first page header, delete any existing text, then from the Menu Bar select Insert, Field Title. Figure 5-2: Imported Styles. The preceding step inserted the title from the document Properties. Inserting and editing date fields: On the first line of the text body of the Class News document type the following words (but do not press the enter key). Class News for [space] The current date will be added by inserting a date field. From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Field, Date. This will insert the current date in place of the word date. Note that the date is shaded. This is to remind you that it is an inserted filed, not regular text. The shading will not appear when the document is printed. It is possible to change the format of the date, and to make it a fixed date, or have it change every time this document is opened and saved. Double click on the date. This opens the Edit Fields dialog box. Figure 5-3: Inserting a date field. Page 50 of 80

51 Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames Observe that either a fixed date or the current date can be set. Also, there are a variety of date formats to choose from. Select your date preferences from the Edit Fields dialog box and then select OK. Using standard paragraph styles: You imported Paragraph Styles from the Lesson 4 document, but no style was created for headings. In this example, one of the standard paragraph styles will be used. With the text cursor in the date paragraph, use the pop down list from the paragraph style area of the Text Formatting Tool Bar to select the Heading 1 style. Move the cursor to the end of the date paragraph and press the Enter key to add a new blank paragraph. With the text cursor in the blank paragraph, double click on the My Text Body Paragraph style in the Sidebar. Figure 5-4: Using the Heading 1 paragraph style. Some text paragraphs will now be added to the Class News document. Enter the following paragraphs in the Class News document. Welcome to the latest edition of LibreOffice Writer Class News. This edition has already helped you see how to import custom page and paragraph formats from other documents. Custom formats can save a lot of time when you are creating different documents that share the same styles. In this edition you have learned how to insert a date field into a document. You can also change between a fixed date or the current date. An Introduction to Word Processing class will be offered soon. The date and time for the class will be posted on the bulletin board. Following is a tentative listing of topics to be covered. Introduction to Word Processing Press the Enter key several times to add some blank paragraphs. Page 51 of 80

52 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Place the text cursor in the Introduction to Word Processing paragraph. From the Paragraph Styles drop down list in the Text Formatting Toolbar, select the Title paragraph style. Position the text cursor in the paragraph below the Introduction to Word Processing paragraph. Adding tables: Next, a table will be inserted into the document. Figure 5-5: Selecting the Chapter paragraph style. Tables are very useful when you want to align sections of text horizontally and vertically. On an old typewriter this was done using tabs and spaces. The problem is that if you use spaces and tabs to align things in word processing, and then change the font size or style, everything will have to be realigned. A table takes all the work out of the alignment process. Tables in LibreOffice Writer have many features similar to spreadsheet programs. From the Menu Bar, select Table, Insert, Table. In the Insert Table dialog box (see Figure 5-6) enter Schedule as the Label. Enter 2 columns and 3 Rows. Toggle the Heading option ON, then select Insert. Figure 5-6: The Insert Table dialog box. Page 52 of 80

53 Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames Your table should now look similar to Figure 5-7 (except that your table will not yet be filled out). Figure 5-7: Inserting a table. There are several points to note when filling out tables. Place the cursor in the first cell of the table and type Session, but do not press the enter key. Pressing the enter key will add another paragraph to a cell. It is not wrong to have multiple paragraphs in a table cell, but most of the time cells hold a single paragraph. Press the TAB key to move to the next cell in the table. If you press the TAB key with the text cursor in the very last table cell, the system will automatically add a new row of cells to the table. You can also use the cursor control arrow keys to move between cells in a table. When the text cursor is in a table cell, the Table Tool Bar will open. Page 53 of 80

54 Len s Introduction to Word Processing There is a lot more to tables than can be covered here, but if you pause the cursor on the different tools of the Table Tool Bar you will get an idea of the different functions available. Fill your table with information similar to that shown in Figure 5-7. (Remember to press the TAB key after each cell entry.) Paragraphs in table cells have a default paragraph style. You can, of course, create your own special paragraph styles for table contents. Observe in the example shown in Figure 5-7 that the first cell in the Topic column has a paragraph that does not fit into one line in the cell. The system automatically uses word wrap to increase the row height as needed. The Session column is much wider than required. There is an easy way to adjust table column widths. Move the cursor over the vertical line between Session and Topic in the table and watch the cursor change to a double arrow. When the cursor changes to a double arrow, drag the vertical line to change the cell width. To get complete control of table characteristics, first position the cursor somewhere in the table, and then from the Menu Bar select Table, Table Properties [or select the Table Properties tool from the Table Tool Bar. This will open the Table Properties dialog box that provides control over all table parameters. If you want to make the table width smaller than the page width, use the Table Properties dialog box to change the Alignment option to Left or Center, and then enter a new Width dimension. Page 54 of 80 Figure 5-8: The Table Properties dialog box.

55 Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames Select the Table Properties tool and then review all of the tabs. When you are through, select OK. Tables can enhance your documents and take the pain out of aligning rows and columns. Tables in LibreOffice Writer can also include many functions found in spreadsheet software. The example below was created directly in this LibreOffice Writer document. It uses date and currency formats (accessed through Table, Number Format from the Menu Bar), and also uses formulas to calculate totals and the sum of the last column. Good bye calculator! Item Purchase Date Cost per Item Qty Book December 5, 2017 $ $43.00 Paper November 3, 2017 $ $41.70 Binders November 3, 2017 $ $8.85 Total Total Cost $93.55 Tables or Columns? Some beginners make the mistake of trying to use page columns to imitate tables. The problem with this is that they have to keep messing with adding and deleting empty paragraphs to keep things aligned between adjacent columns. Columns are designed newspaper style documents to have the text flow from one column to another. The use of columns can improve reading speeds for many people since the eyes can track faster vertically rather than having to track both horizontally and vertically. However, columns should never be substituted for tables. Inserting Frames: The next LibreOffice Writer feature that will be explained is frames. Frames are like little documents that are inserted into a main document. Frames can contain the same kinds of things the main document contains, however, the main document body text flows around frames. They are sometimes used as side-bars to provide separate but related text or illustrations. Frames can contain text, graphic images, or tables. Frames are typically Anchored to a paragraph in the main document. They can float with a paragraph. That means that if the text before a frame is edited, and this causes the paragraph to move, the anchored frame will move with it. The Wrap function can be used to control how text flows around a frame. Page 55 of 80

56 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Enter the following paragraphs after the table in the Class News document. Frames added to list of useful tools. Frames are like little documents that are inserted into a main document. They can contain the same things the main document contains. They are sometimes used as side-bars to provide separate but related text. Frames can also contain graphics images or tables. Frames are typically anchored to a paragraph in the main document. They float with the paragraph. That means that if the text before a frame is edited, and this causes the anchor paragraph to move, the frame will move with it. The wrap function can be used to make text flow around a frame. Place the text cursor in the Frames added to list of useful tools paragraph, then set the Paragraph Style to Heading 1. Next, a frame will be added to the document. Place the text cursor in the Frames added to list of useful tools paragraph, then from the Menu Bar, select Insert, Frame, Frame. This opens the Frame dialog box. The Type tab of the dialog box provides for setting the width, height, and position of the frame. In the Frame-Type dialog box, set the Width to 2.50, the Height to 1.5, the Anchor to To paragraph, the Horizontal position to Right, to Paragraph area, and the Vertical position to Top to Paragraph text area. With the Wrap tab selected in the Frame dialog box, set the Wrap to Before. With the Borders tab selected in the Frame dialog box, select the Set all four borders Figure 5 9: The Frame Type dialog box. option, and set the Line Width to 0.35pt. With the Borders tab selected in the Frame dialog box, set the Shadow style position to Cast Shadow to Bottom Right. With the Area tab selected in the Frame dialog box, set the color to Light Yellow 4, then select OK to create the frame. Page 56 of 80

57 Lesson 5 Styles, Tables, and Frames The results of your frame design should look similar to Figure To add text to the frame, place the text cursor inside the frame and enter the following text. This text is inside a frame. Text in a frame can use any paragraph style. To stop adding text to a frame, click the text cursor outside of the frame. Observe that the default paragraph Figure 5-10: Adding a frame. style for frames is Frame contents. However, any paragraph style can be assigned to paragraphs in frames. A frame can also contain a graphic image. If you click the cursor on a frame border, the frame will be selected and grab points will be added to the corners and mid points of the frame. By dragging these grab points you can move or resize a frame. If you double click on a selected frame border, the Frame dialog box will open and modifications can be made to the frame. When you are through modifying your Class News document, Save the file. Points to remember: Page, paragraph and other styles can be imported into a new document from existing documents. Tables provide an easy way to format rows and columns of entries. Tables in LibreOffice Writer provide a number of functions found in spreadsheet software including formatting cells to display currency or dates and inserting calculation formulas in cells. Columns should never be used in documents where side by side alignment of text is required. Tables are preferred over columns for this application. Frames can be inserted into the body of a document and can contain their own text or graphics. Frames can be set to make the body text wrap around the frame. Frames can have border lines, background fills, and shadows. Page 57 of 80

58 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Page 58 of 80

59 Lesson 6 Adding Graphics Lesson 6 Adding Graphics Inserting Graphics Images Graphics files (pictures, drawings, and other images) can be inserted into documents, or into frames within documents. They can either be embedded or linked. It is not possible to tell the difference between embedded and linked graphics by simply looking at a document. Embedded graphics become an integral part of the document and increase the size of the file. Linked graphics are not added directly to a document. Instead, the document contains a pointer, or file address, that the system uses to fetch the file whenever it is needed. An advantage of linked files is that if the original graphic is changed, the document will automatically include the changed graphic. Also, by embedding graphics, the document size is smaller than it would be if the graphic was embedded. A disadvantage of linked graphics is that if the document is moved from one computer to another, the linked files must also be moved. The trick to solving this problem is to create a special folder for the document with a graphics sub-folder. If the document folder is copied to a different computer, the linked files folder will follow along. If your Lesson 5 Class News document is not on the display, Open it. Select File, Save As and enter the name Lesson 6 Class News. Select File, Properties, Description and edit the Title to Class News Lesson 6. From the Menu Bar, select Tools, Update, Update All. The last step should have updated the title of the document in the header. The process of saving a document file with a new name is a good trick to keep in mind. There will be many times when you want to create a new variation of a document while preserving the original version. Insert the following paragraphs at the end of the Lesson 6 Class News document. Graphics can enhance documents. Including graphic images in documents can improve the appearance and clarity of the document text message. Most people believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. Many times a picture can improve the reader's understanding of the document content. Graphic images that are inserted in a document can be anchored to a paragraph, or can be anchored to the page itself. Images anchored to a paragraph will float with the paragraph, or follow the location of the paragraph when editing changes the location of the paragraph. However, there may be times when it is desirable to have a graphic image maintain a constant location on a page. Place the text cursor in the Graphics can enhance documents paragraph, then set the Paragraph Style to Heading 1. Page 59 of 80

60 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Place the text cursor somewhere in the last paragraph and from the Menu Bar select Insert, Image. This will open the Insert Image dialog box. This dialog box is similar to the Windows File, Open dialog box in that it has a Directory Path for selecting the folder where the desired file is located. Near the bottom center of the Insert picture dialog box is a Link toggle box. If there is a check mark in this box, the graphic file will be linked. If it is not checked, the graphic will be embedded in the document. Uncheck the Link toggle. Figure 6-1: The Insert Image dialog box. Any picture can be substituted in the next step. Different versions of Windows usually have one or more sample pictures in the My Pictures, Sample Pictures folder. Nearly all Windows computers have some graphics files that are used for desktop wallpaper. Adjust the Directory path to show the folder containing your desired picture (in this example the Users, Public Pictures folder was used), then select a picture file. Select the desired graphic file in the Insert Image dialog box and select Open. Once a graphic is inserted you have to decide how and where it should appear. If you have inserted a large picture, you should re-size it for this exercise. Left click on the picture to select it. When a picture is selected, grab points will appear at the corners and mid points of the picture edge. These grab points can be used to re-size the picture. When a picture is selected and you move the cursor into the picture area, the cursor will change to a four way arrow. When the four way arrow cursor is active, you can drag the picture to a new location. Double click on the image. Page 60 of 80 Figure 6-2: Inserting an image.

61 Lesson 6 Adding Graphics This opens the Image dialog box as shown Figure 6-3. With the Type tab selected in the Image dialog box, toggle the Keep ratio option ON, set the Width to 1.50 and set the Anchor To paragraph. (If the dialog box shows a percentage, toggle the Relative option off.) Set the Horizontal Position to Right. Select the Wrap tab in the Image dialog box and set Wrap to Before. With the Borders tab selected in the Image dialog box, select the Set All Four Borders option. Then select the Cast Shadow to Bottom Right option. In the Figure 6-3: The Image dialog box. Spacing to contents area, set the spacing to 0.12 for all sides. With the Area tab selected in the Image dialog box, select a background color for the picture. Select OK to close the dialog box. Figure 6-2 shows a screen capture from the Class News document after an image has been inserted. The grab points at the corners and mid points of the image show that the image is selected. This example has the Wrap set to Before and the alignment to Right. Graphic images are similar to frames in that they can have borders and shadows. Images can also have captions. Captions are added by right clicking on a picture and selecting the Insert Caption option. Observe that when an image is selected, the anchor point will be shown by a little anchor icon (see Figure 6-2). Don't forget that you can move a picture around by selecting the picture and then dragging it to a new location. Inserting drawn graphics LibreOffice Writer includes a set of drawing tools that can be used to enhance your documents without having to buy, and learn how to use, a paint program. A complete book could be written about the LibreOffice Writer drawing functions, In this exercise, a brief sample will be provided. Use Ctrl+End to position the text cursor at the end of your document. Press the Enter key a couple of times to add some blank paragraphs at the end of the text. Page 61 of 80

62 Len s Introduction to Word Processing From the Menu Bar, select View, Toolbars, and toggle the Drawing toolbar ON. The Drawing toolbar should appear along the bottom of the display. There are far too many drawing tools to discuss here. Observe that some of the tools have a little arrow on the right side of the tool icon. If you click on these arrows, additional drawing tools will appear. If you hover the mouse cursor over a tool, a tool tip will pop up and give a hint of what the tool does. Position the cursor over the Symbols tool and then click the arrow to expand the tool and select the Smiley Face Figure 6-4: The Drawing tools. tool. With the Smiley Face tool selected, move the cursor to an empty area of your document and click and drag a smiley face. When a graphic is selected, the Graphics Formatting Toolbar will appear below the normal Toolbar as shown in Figure 6-5. The Sidebar will also show graphics formatting tools. Take a minute to move the cursor over the drawing format tools to see their tool tip. Use the Area Style/Filling tool to change the smiley face fill color to yellow. Drag the smiley face to near the lower right corner of the page. Right click on the smiley face and select Wrap, Optimal Page Wrap from the pop up context menu. Figure 6-5: The Graphics Formatting tools. When you add text, the text will wrap itself around the smiley face graphic. But first, let's have a little more fun. From the Drawing toolbar, select the Cloud tool from the Callout tools options. Page 62 of 80

63 Lesson 6 Adding Graphics Drag out a Cloud Callout graphic and position it as shown. Right click on the Cloud Callout and select Wrap, Optimal Page Wrap from the pop up context menu. Double click on the Cloud Callout and enter some text. Click in the page and enter the following text. LibreOffice Writer includes a set of drawing tools that can be used to enhance your documents without having to buy, and learn how to use, a paint program. A complete book could be written about the LibreOffice Writer drawing functions, In this exercise, a brief sample will be provided. Copy and paste the text several times to provide example text to demonstrate the Wrap function. Figure 6-6: Graphic images with wrapped text. Figure 6-6 shows a page with graphics and wrapped text. Double clicking in a drawing object allows you to enter text into the text into the graphics object. Save your Lesson 6 Class News document. Press Ctrl+End to jump to the end of your document. Press Ctrl + Enter key to force a page break. The Ctrl+Enter trick forces a page break and places the text cursor at the top of a new page. See Figure 6-7 for examples of the following steps. Try creating an ellipse and then changing the fill color to a gradient fill. To create a circle, use the ellipse tool and hold the shift key down when you drag it out. Try a bitmap or hatching fill pattern. Experiment with mixing text and graphics. (Hint, double click on a filled graphic, such as a rectangle, and add text.) Hover the cursor over the different drawing tools to get an idea of what they do. Click on the small arrows near the different tools to reveal more drawing shape options. Select a graphic object on your page, and then explore the different Drawing Formatting Toolbar [or Sidebar] options. Have fun! Page 63 of 80

64 Len s Introduction to Word Processing The drawing tools used in LibreOffice Writer are shared by the LibreOffice Drawing program that is part of the LibreOffice suite. However, LibreOffice Drawing includes additional 3D drawing options. If you want to create a quick sign or other graphics intensive documents, consider LibreOffice Drawing rather than LibreOffice Writer. Points to remember: Graphics can either be embedded or linked. Figure 6-7: Creating Drawing objects. Embedded graphics become part of the document and will increase the document file size considerably. Linked graphics do not increase the file size. Also, if a linked graphic is changed, the next time the document is printed it will use the latest version of the graphic. If a document file is moved to a new computer, the linked graphic files must also be moved. Graphic images can be set to have the text wrap around the image. Graphic objects can be filled with solid colors, gradient (shaded) fills, bitmaps, or hatching. Page 64 of 80

65 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter Introduction This lesson will cover some of the basics for creating a newsletter or similar two column document. Most newsletters have a standard format that is repeated in each issue. This is a natural application for LibreOffice Writer since once the page and paragraph styles have been established, the editor need only worry about content. Importing Styles Open LibreOffice Writer and start a new document. From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, and enter Lesson 7 Newsletter as the file name. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select Load Styles. In the Load Styles dialog box, toggle all of the check boxes on, then select From File. In the Open dialog box, select My Lesson 4. This last step has saved a lot of time in creating page and paragraph styles. There are a few modifications Figure 7-1: Loading Styles. to make for the newsletter format, but starting with the styles created in an earlier lesson provides a big head start. Place the text cursor in the first page. Then, from the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Page tool and double click on the My First Page style. From the Menu Bar, select File, Properties and enter My LibreOffice Writer Newsletter as the Title. Your document should now look similar to Figure 7-3. If the document title does not appear in the first page header, you missed a step back in Lesson 4. No problem. If the title does not appear, complete the following step. Figure 7-2: The Properties Title Page 65 of 80

66 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Place the text cursor in the header and from the Menu Bar select Insert, Field, Title. Inserting a Date Field Place the text cursor at the end of the title paragraph and press the Enter key. From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Field, Date. Double click on the date and in the Edit Fields dialog box, select your preferred date format. Figure 7-3: Modifying the title. Modifying a Paragraph Style Next, we will modify the Paragraph Style for the first page header. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Paragraph tool and right click on the My Title Paragraph style and select Modify. In the Paragraph Style My Title Paragraph dialog box, select the Borders TAB. Set the Line Width to Set the Padding to 0.12, then select Apply and view the result.. In the Paragraph Style My Title Paragraph dialog box, select the Area TAB. Select the Bitmap option, select the Figure 7-4: Formatting the date field. Sky bitmap, then select Apply and view the result. In the Paragraph Style My Title Paragraph dialog box, select the Font Effects TAB. Turn the Outline and Shadow options ON. Change the Font color to Blue, then select Apply and view the result. Page 66 of 80

67 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter You should feel free to explore the different Paragraph Style settings and options, and do a bit of experimenting. When you are satisfied with your My Title Paragraph style modifications, select OK. Figure 7-5: Modifying My Title Paragraph style. As you can see, it is easy to create a custom newsletter masthead by using a custom Paragraph style for the page header text. Modifying Page Styles It is common for newsletters to use a two column style. Most people can read narrow columns of text faster than full page with lined of text. Your eyes can track vertically better than having to shift from one side of the page to another. Therefore, we will modify the newsletter page styles to have 2 columns. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Page tool and right click on the My First Page style, and select Modify. Select the columns TAB. In the Page Style My First Page dialog box select the 2 Figure 7-6: Setting the page style to 2 columns. Columns option. Check to see that the Spacing between columns is 0.20, then select OK. Page 67 of 80

68 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Repeat the above steps for the My Left Page and My Right Page styles. Importing Text Next, we will need some text for our newsletter. For this example we will copy and paste text from the Internet. The rule of thumb is that you should never have to type text twice, even if someone else typed it first. Open your web browser and go to In the Wikipedia search box, enter Plant Taxonomy. Highlight (or select) the first two paragraphs in the article ( See Figure 7-1) and then press Ctrl+C to copy the text to the clipboard. We would like to paste the text into the newsletter, but we do not want to use whatever text formatting used by Wikipedia. LibreOffice Writer has an option for pasting text that will use the current paragraph style. Place the text cursor in the first paragraph in your newsletter column 1. Figure 7-7: Copying text from Wikipedia. In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Paragraph tool and double click on the My Text Body Paragraph style. From the Menu Bar, select Edit, Paste Unformatted Text. This trick will add the text to your document using the paragraph style where the text was pasted. The Wikipedia article added an extra blank paragraph between the two paragraphs. This is easy to delete. Place the text cursor in the blank paragraph and press the Del key. Figure 7-8: Pasting Unformatted Text. Have you saved your document lately? We need a heading for this part of the newsletter article. We can copy and paste the words Plant Taxonomy to a new line. Page 68 of 80

69 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter Press Ctrl+Home to move the text cursor to the top of the document, the press the Enter key to add a new paragraph. Select the words Plant taxonomy and press Ctrl+C to copy the words to the clipboard. Press Ctrl+Home to move the text cursor to the top of the document. Press Ctrl+V to paste the text. With the text cursor in the first line, select Heading 1 from the Paragraph Style drop down list. That was so much fun, let s get some more text from Wikipedia. Figure 7-9: Selecting the Heading 1 style. Press Ctrl+End to move the text cursor to the end of the document and press Enter. Set the paragraph style to Heading 1 and then enter Carl Linnaeus. Press Enter to add anew paragraph. Set the new paragraph to the My Text Body Paragraph style. Select the text Carl Linnaeus and press Ctrl+C to copy the text. Go to the Wikipedia web site, place the text cursor in the search box, and then press Ctrl+V and search for Carl Linnaeus. The copy and paste tricks work between different program windows and can save you a lot of time. Highlight (or select) the first three paragraphs in the Carl Linnaeus article and then press Ctrl+C to copy the text to the clipboard. Place the text cursor in the My Text Body paragraph below the Carl Linnaeus heading. From the Menu Bar, select Edit, Paste Unformatted Text. Delete the blank paragraphs in the Linnaeus article. Have you saved your document lately? Importing Pictures The copy and paste trick works for pictures as well as text. Right click on the picture of Linnaeus in the Wikipedia article, and then select Copy Image from the context menu. Figure 7-10: Copying an image. Page 69 of 80

70 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Place the text cursor somewhere in the first paragraph of the Linnaeus article, then press Ctrl+V. This adds the picture, but it needs a bit of formatting. Double click on the Linnaeus picture in the newsletter. Select the Type TAB in the Image dialog box. Toggle the Keep ratio option ON in the Image dialog box. Set the Width to 1.25, then set the Horizontal Position to Right. Select the Wrap TAB in the Image dialog box. Set wrap to Before, and then set Spacing to 0.10 for Left, Right, Top, and Bottom. Select the Borders TAB in the Image dialog box. Set All Four Borders, then select Cast Shadow to Top Left. Select OK in the Image dialog box. Your newsletter should now look similar to Figure Press Ctrl+End to move the text cursor to the end of the document and press Enter. Set the paragraph style to Heading 1 and then enter Rudbeckia. Press Enter to add anew paragraph. Set the new paragraph to the My Text Body Paragraph style. Select the text Rudbeckia and press Ctrl+C to copy the text. Go to the Wikipedia web site, place the text cursor in the search box, and then press Ctrl+V and search for Rudbeckia. Highlight (or select) the paragraphs in the Rudbeckia article down to the word Ratibida and then press Ctrl+C to copy the text to the clipboard. Place the text cursor in the My Text Body Paragraph below the Rudbeckia heading. Page 70 of 80 Figure 7-11: Adding a picture. Figure 7-12: Adding a Rudbeckia picture.

71 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter From the Menu Bar, select Edit, Paste Unformatted Text. This example shows what happens when you copy specially formatted text and paste it into your document. The text that was copied included text in a frame. In this example we will simply delete unwanted paragraphs. Delete the blank paragraphs in the Rudbeckia article including the paragraphs from the Contents box. OK, here is a quiz challenge for you. Copy and paste the rudbeckia picture into your newsletter. Make the image 2.0 inches wide. Next we will add a bit of highlighted text. Go to the last paragraph in the Rudbeckia article. Remember how to select a sentence? Select the first sentence in the last paragraph of the Rudbeckia article. Use the Highlight Color tool to set the highlight color to Light Yellow 4. OK, time for another challenge quiz. Do you remember how to change font case? In the last paragraph, select Olof Rudbeck. Change the case of the Olof Rudbeck to upper case. HINT: Use Format, Text. Make Olof Rudbeck Bold. Press Ctrl+C to copy the Olof Rudbeck text. Figure 7-13: Highlighting text. Press Ctrl+End and add a paragraph to the end of your text. Paste the Olof Rudbeck text into the last paragraph. Change Olof Rudbeck to the Heading 1 style. Press Enter to add a new paragraph and set the style to My Text Body Paragraph. Go to Wikipedia and paste Olof Rudbeck in the search box. Copy the first paragraph in the Rudbeck article and add it your newsletter. Have you saved your document lately? Page 71 of 80

72 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Next challenge. Copy and paste the Olof Rudbeck picture into the first paragraph of the Olof Rudbeck article. Set the picture width to 1.50, Position Right, wrap Before, 4 borders with 0.04 padding. Adding Captions Next, we will add a caption to the picture. Right click on the Olof Rudbeck picture. Select Insert Caption from the context menu. The Caption dialog box provides several Category text options to precede your caption. You can also enter your own In this example, we will select None. Select Category None Enter the text Olof Rudbeck, Len s 8th great uncle. Figure 7-14: Inserting a Caption. Captions have a default paragraph style, however, you can use any paragraph style, including custom styles for caption paragraphs. In the example shown, the caption text was selected and the font modified. Have you saved your document lately? Let s add another article to the newsletter. In the Olof Rudbeck article, select and copy Johannes Rudbeckius. Go to the end of the document and add a new Heading 1 paragraph for Johannes Figure 7-15: Picture with caption. Rudbeckius. Add a new My Text Body Paragraph below the Johannes Rudbeckius Heading 1 paragraph. Enter Johannes Rudbeckius in the Wikipedia search box. Copy the 5 paragraphs about Johannes Rudbeckius from Wikipedia and past them in your newsletter as unformatted text. Delete the blank paragraphs from the article. By now you can see how easy it is to copy text from an Internet article and add it to your own documents. Let s add another article to the newsletter so that we will have enough text to fill at least 3 pages. Page 72 of 80

73 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter In the Wikipedia article about Johannes Rudbeckius, locate and select the name Alfred Nobel near the end of the article. (The name should be highlighted in blue.) This should open a Wikipedia article about Alfred Nobel. Follow the process used above to add a section about Alfred Nobel to your newsletter. Add a picture of Alfred. Next we will add an introductory paragraph followed by a Table of Contents for the document. Press Ctrl+Home to move the text cursor to the beginning of the document. Enter the words In This Issue and change the paragraph style to Heading 1. In the paragraph following In This Issue, enter the following text. This issue of Flower Power News focuses on the history of giving the Black Eyed Susan the scientific name Rudbeckia. You will learn about some of the historical characters who have influenced the field of botany. Have you saved your document lately? Inserting a Table of Contents Tables of contents are based on paragraph styles. The default style Heading 1 makes it easy to insert a Table of Contents to our document. Place the text cursor in the paragraph below the text entered in the previous step. From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Table of Contents and Index, Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography. Select the Type TAB in the Table of Contents dialog box and check to see the Title is Table of Contents. Select the Background TAB in the Table of Contents dialog box. Select Light Lime 4 as the Background Color. Select OK to close the Table of Contents dialog box. If you hover the mouse pointer over the Figure 7-16: Inserting a Table of Contents paragraphs in the Table of Contents, you can see the default paragraph style for each entry. It is possible to either modify the default paragraph styles, or to create custom paragraph styles for use in the Table of Contents. In this example, the default styles will be modified. Page 73 of 80

74 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Right click on the Table of Contents paragraph. From the context menu, select Styles, Edit style. In the Paragraph Style Contents Heading dialog box, select the Alignment TAB, select Center, then select OK. Right click on one of the contents listing paragraphs and from the context menu, select Styles, Edit style. In the Paragraph Style Contents 1 dialog box, select the Indents & Spacing TAB. Set the Indent, Before text to Set the Indent, After text to Select the Font TAB and set the font to Ariel, Bold, 11pt. Select OK to close the dialog box. Figure 7-17: Modifying a paragraph style. Your document should look similar to Figure If you make any changes to the text in your document, it might change what page the Heading 1 paragraphs are located. Before finalizing your document you should right click on the Table of Contents and select Update Index. Modifying Paragraph Styles In earlier lessons, you learned how to modify paragraph style by right clicking on the style in the Sidebar and selecting Modify. As you have seen in the Table of Contents example, you can also modify a paragraph style by right clicking on it in the body of the document and selecting Styles, Edit from the context menu. Let s use this trick to modify the header and footer paragraphs. Right click on the left page header paragraph. Figure 7-18: A modified Table of Contents. In the Paragraph Style My Left Header Paragraph dialog box, select the Indents & Spacing TAB. Set the Indent, First line text to Page 74 of 80

75 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter Select the Borders TAB and select the Set Top and Bottom Borders Only option. Select the Area TAB, Bitmap option, and set the Bitmap to Sky. Then select OK. Repeat these settings for the My Right Header Paragraph style. You can also modify the footer paragraph styles if you like. Have you saved your document lately? Widows and Orphans In typesetting, widows and orphans are lines at the beginning or end of a paragraph, which are left dangling at the top or bottom of a column, separated from the rest of the paragraph. Most document designers do not like to see a page or column begin or end with a single line of text. LibreOffice Writer provides a way of controlling widows and orphans. There is also a way to control Hyphenation of words. Right click on a My Text Body Paragraph. In the Paragraph Style My Text Body Paragraph dialog box, select the Text Flow TAB. In the Options section, turn on the Orphan control, and Widow control options ON. Turn ON the Hyphenation, Automatically option. Select the Indents & Spacing TAB, and change the First line spacing to Then select OK. Now that we have dedicated this newsletter to botany, let s change the title. Changing The Document Title From the Menu Bar, select File, Properties. Change the title to Flower Power News. If you press Crtl+Home, you should see the new title in the first page header. We can use the Insert, Field tool to add this to the headers. Place the text cursor in the left page header. Select all of the text, then from the Menu Bar, select Insert, Field, Title. Place the text cursor after the title in the header, add a space, then select Insert, Field, Date. Double click on the date and select your preferred date format. Repeat this process for the right page header. Have you saved your document lately? By using the Insert, Fields trick, you can change all of the headers and footer text with a quick change of the Properties Title. Changing A Page Background One last experiment is to mess with the first page background. Page 75 of 80

76 Len s Introduction to Word Processing NOTE: If your computer does not have enough processor speed or RAM, adding a background graphic to a page may slow it down. Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the first page. From the Sidebar, select the Gallery tool. In the Gallery, select Backgrounds. Right click on sand-light and then select Insert as Background, Page. When you add a background to a page, it will look better if some space is added between the margin and the text. This can be done by modifying the paragraph styles. Right click on a My Text Body Paragraph. Select the Indents & Spacing TAB, and change the Before text and After text spacing to Then select OK. Right click on a Heading 1 Paragraph. Select the Indents & Spacing TAB, and change the Before text spacing to Figure 7-19: Inserting a page background image. Just in case the paragraph style changes moved things to different pages, the Table of Contents should be updated. You might also have to move some of the pictures around after chnging the paragraph style. When you move a captioned picture be sure to select the frame, not the image. In some cases you might have to add blank paragraphs to force picture frames to stay within the margins. Right click on the Table of Contents and select Update index. Be careful when adding background images to pages. I have see too many instances when clever designers get carried away with adding colorful styles to documents and making them hard to read. I have seen this in high quality magazines where the artistic page design interferes with text readability. I have been frustrated by brochures designed for seniors that use font color and background color combinations together with small font sizes that require seniors to use a magnifying glass to read the text. The point is that even tough LibreOffice Writer provides you with a variety of design options, you should keep your audience in mind and do not create documents that artists love, but that are not readable. One last trick to finish this lesson. Page 76 of 80 Figure 7-20: Inserting a current date field.

77 Lesson 7 - Creating A Two Column Newsletter Press Ctrl+End to place the text cursor at the end of the document. Enter This document was last edited and then from the Menu Bar select Insert, Field, Date. Double click on the date and select Date [rather than Date(fixed)]. Then select your preferred date format. To get an idea of how the entire newsletter will look, you can use the Page view and zoom tools. In the lower right corner of the LibreOffice Writer window, select the Book View option. Adjust the zoom until you can see the entire document layout. The Page and Paragraph styles you have created can be applied to any document where you would like to use the two column format. If you are creating similar documents, like newsletters, on a regular basis, LibreOffice Writer makes the job easier. To create a new addition of a newsletter, simply load an existing document, use File Save As to create a document with a new name, and delete all of the text. Now you can simply create words for the new version without the added effort of formatting the document. Have you saved your document lately? Exporting PDF Files Figure 7-21: The If you want to share documents with folks who do not have Book View. LibreOffice Writer, you should export a PDF file that you can attach to an , or share on a flash drive. Nearly everyone has Acrobat Reader, or some program that can open PDF files. To export a PDF file, select the Export as PDF tool on the Tool Bar. When the PDF file is opened, it will include quick click bookmarks from your Heading 1 paragraphs. Page 77 of 80

78 Len s Introduction to Word Processing Page 78 of 80

79 Appendix A - Settings Appendix A - Settings This section describes how to make your LibreOffice Writer displays look similar to the illustrations in the Lessons. LibreOffice is available on different operating system including Windows, Mac, and Linux. LibreOffice provides users a number of different options for personalizing the display, so it may look slightly different on different computers. The tutorials found in this collection of documents were created using LibreOffice 6 on a computer running Windows 10. Follow the steps below if you would like to adjust your system display to look similar to the illustrations in the tutorials in this collection. Setting the Toolbar Style From the Menu Bar, select Tools, Options, View. This opens the View options dialog box as shown in Figure2. Set the Icon size to Large and the style to Galaxy. Turn on the Drawing Toolbar Some tutorial lessons in this series will call for adding graphics to documents. The Drawing toolbar makes it easier to add graphic images to documents. Figure A- 1: Setting View properties. The View, Toolbars options are toggles. Each time an option is selected, the option changes between on and off. When a check mark appears beside an option, the option is toggled on. From the Menu Bar, select View, Toolbars, and toggle Drawing ON (See Figure 2). Figure A- 2: Toggling the Drawing toolbar on. The Drawing Toolbar should appear along the bottom of the display (See Figure 3). Page 79 of 80

80 Len s Introduction to Word Processing The Styles and Formatting Toolbar The Styles and Formatting toolbar is a floating toolbar. That means that it can be moved around the display by dragging its button. Styles and Formatting tools are also found in the Sidebar. Advanced users may want to customize their display by moving toolbars around. I don t recommend that beginning users drag toolbars out of their default locations. It can be difficult for beginning users to put things back to normal. Figure A- 3: The Drawing toolbar. Toolbars can also be docked. Docked means locked to a part of the display. If the Sidebar is not visible, from the Menu Bar select View, Sidebar. [Or, press F11.] The contents of the Styles and Formatting toolbar, or Sidebar, will depend on which of the style options is selected, and the styles collection. Don't worry about what appears in your Styles and Formatting toolbar until it is required in one of the tutorial lessons. This completes the LibreOffice Writer display options setup process. The settings shown here are used in the tutorial lessons. As you gain experience with LibreOffice, you may want to customize your settings to accommodate the type of documents you are creating. Page 80 of 80