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 www.libreoffice.org 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 1 of 10
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 2 of 10
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 3 of 10
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 4 of 10
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 5 of 10
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 6 of 10 Figure 5-8: The Table Properties dialog box.
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 $21.50 2 $43.00 Paper November 3, 2017 $6.95 6 $41.70 Binders November 3, 2017 $2.95 3 $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 7 of 10
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 8 of 10
The results of your frame design should look similar to Figure 5-10. 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 9 of 10
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