OpenOffice 2014 Writer Guide
Apache OpenOffice
Writer
for students
by David Paenson, B. A. Hons.
January 2014
IMPRESSUM
Copyright David Paenson 2008©
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except
in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.
org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES
OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. Please forward comments and
criticisms to: info@openoffice-uni.org. This introduction covers version 4.0.1 of Apache
OpenOffice (for Windows, Linux and Mac).
CONTENTS
1 Introduction
2 Automation
3 Document Structure
4 First Steps
5 Headings
6 Chapter Numbering
7 Table of Contents
8 Outline
9 Navigating your Text
10 Group Work
11 Proofreading
12 Paragraph Style “Text Body”
13 More on Styles
14 Exporting Styles for re-use
15 MS-Word
16 Unnumbered First Pages
17 Formatting your Title Page
18 Papers Without a Title Page
19 Numbered Default Page
20 Roman Page Numbering
21 Bullets and Numbering
22 Line Numbering
23 Cross-References
24 Footnotes and References
25 Formatting your Literature List
26 Quotes
27 Tables
28 Charts
29 Snapshots
30 Pictures
31 Presentations & Graphics
32 Cross Tables (Statistics)
33 Extra Long Web Addresses
34 Fonts
35 Emphasis
36 Special Characters
37 Non separable combinations
38 Shortcut keys
39 Mouse Clicks
40 PDFs
41 Saving your files
42 Several files open at once
43 Search and Replace
44 Auto Spell Check
45 Synonyms
46 Document Infos
47 Labels and Form Letters
48 Help
49 Getting Apache OpenOffice
50 Basic Practice
51 Extra Practice
1 Introduction
This short guide is based on introductory courses I have been giving since 2008 to all first year
students at the Faculty of Social Work at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. Participants’ suggestions and criticisms have all been included as well as the results of many hours
spent with students formatting their thesis.
My aim is not to detail the numerous functions of Apache OpenOffice Writer, but simply to
focus on the typical real life situations of the student needing to format any lengthy document, especially his or her bachelor or master thesis.
The most common procedures for your daily work are all contained in section 50 “Basic Practice“. I would recommend you do this exercise right now in order to get a feeling for the programme. You will soon discover how easy it is to use. Afterwards please come back and read
on from here.
Note: Make sure to read the entire guide in sequence so as to obtain a proper overview of the programme. The various sections build one upon the other so it’s useless trying to jump directly
to those parts you feel might come in handy.
1
Chapter
number
Main Chapter
with continuous line
above and lots of
space below
Body Text
Footnotes
Footer with
Continuous
line
Page Number
in Footer
Section
Heading
Illustration 1: Page out of a book with examples of recurring elements
2 Automation
Your thesis like any other typical document, book or magazine will contain a number of
recurring elements such as headings, footnotes, page layouts, the main text body, quotations,
literature lists, pages etc. (see illustration 1). All these elements need to be formatted uniformly.
Additionally many of these elements, such as pages, headings, footnotes, lists, illustrations etc.
need to be numbered.
Finally, the table of contents and other tables can then be generated automatically.
These various settings are all recorded in a few central locations and apply uniformly to the
whole document independently of its length.
3 Document Structure
When conceiving an essay or thesis you will invariably have in your mind’s eye not only its contents but also its overall structure.
The contents consist in the main of the actual text. It is the Text Body which makes up the bulk
of the document. The Text Body has its own formatting style, appropriately called just that:
Text Body. But we will go into that in more detail in section 12.
For now we want to deal with the structure of a document. The main means to make the
underlying structure optically visible for the reader is of course the use of chapter and section
headings. Your text will surely have an implicit structure independently of any headings anyway,
but it’s the headings which make it explicit.
There are of course first and foremost the main chapter headings, that is Level 1. Then you
might want section headings, that would be Level 2 and subsection headings, Level 3, and so
on, right down to a theoretical Level 10.
These various Levels are optically distinguishable one from the other by:
• font size (measured in points, abbreviated as “pt”)
• typeface (regular/bold/italic)
• font (e.g. Times/Arial/Garamond/Futura etc.)
• spacing above paragraph
• spacing below paragraph
• numbering (optional)
• breaks (e.g. main chapter headings might all begin on a new page)
It’s best to type in all the headings and sub-headings right from the start and activate their
automatic numbering too. So you have a structure which you can then fill in little by little with
text.
Once you have the headings you can then automatically generate a table of contents.
2
Note: The decision what is a heading and what it should look like are two separate decisions.
4 First Steps
When embarking on a new text you will invariably ask yourself: should I concentrate just on
the content and leave the formatting till later? Or should I try to format the text properly right
from the beginning?
The second approach is the right one. Using Styles is so easy there is really no reason why you
shouldn’t apply them right from the start. Here some of the advantages of this way of going
about things:
• save time
• using the Navigator (see section 9) you can jump to any chapter you wish to edit
without having to scroll up or down to it
• chapters and sections can – again using the Navigator – be reordered with just one
mouse click
• you’ll have a better idea of what the final result of your efforts is going to look like
5 Headings
As mentioned above you have to tell the programme what is a Heading and what is Text Body.
For that you use the following keyboard shortcuts:
• Ctrl
+
0 for Text Body (ground level)
• Ctrl
+
1 for Chapter Headings (level 1)
• Ctrl
+
2 for Section Headings (level 2)
• Ctrl
+
3 for Subsection Headings (level 3)
Note: It isn’t necessary to mark the whole paragraph beforehand – just place the cursor anywhere within the paragraph and apply the short cut.
For those of you who use Macs: it’s not the Ctrl Key but the Cmd Key instead. But I’ll
leave it up to you to figure out the variations. Linux machines use the same keyboard shortcuts
as Windows.
□ Making your Headings Look Nice
If you right click on, say, any Level 1 heading, a menu pops up. One of its options is Edit
Paragraph Style. Any changes made here will apply to all other Level 1 Headings. Same
goes of course for the other levels, indeed for any paragraph style.
Generally headings should meet following criteria:
• left alignment
• hyphenation turned off
3
• single line spacing
• conciseness
Here my formatting suggestions for the first three levels of headings:
Style Font Size Typeface Spacing
above
Spacing
below
Chapter headings (level 1) Garamond 16pt Bold 1.2 cm 0.5 cm
Section headings (level 2) Garamond 13pt Bold 1 cm 0.4 cm
Subsection headings (level 3) Garamond 13pt Italic 0.8 cm 0.3 cm
Table 1: Styles for Headings (just a suggestion)
□ New Page for Each Chapter Heading?
If you want each chapter to begin on a new page, then right-click on any chapter heading and
choose Edit Paragraph Style; under the tab Text Flow check box Breaks › Insert
› Type › Page.
If you would like to avoid chapter headings near the bottom of the page, you can insert a
page break right before the heading using the shortcut Ctrl
+
Return to shift the heading
to the beginning of the following page.
Alternatively you could right click the paragraph immediately following the heading and
choose Paragraph
› Text Flow › Options › Do not split paragraph. The para-
graph in question will “pull” the heading immediately above it along to the next page should
there not be enough room for both on the present page. Note: you’ve changed the formatting
of this one paragraph here, not the overall Paragraph Style!
Using this method consistently spares you the necessity of a final check for any misplaced
headings.
□ Blank Lines?
When in a hurry it’s tempting to just add a couple of blank lines before a heading and another
blank line following it in order to influence spacing. But this destroys the “sticking” effect –
that is, the property of headings to always keep together with the next paragraph. Instead
change spacings within the paragraph styles pertaining to the various header levels using suggestions listed in table 1.
□ How Many Levels?
I would recommend a maximum of two numbered heading levels:
1 Chapter
1.1 Section
1.2 Section
1.3 Section
2 Chapter
2.1 Section
4
2.2 Section
2.3 Section
etc.
Per level you should have at least two headings. If you have a 2.1 heading then you should also
have a 2.2 heading, a 2.1 all alone would definitely be a mistake.
If you are going to use a third or even fourth level, then leave these unnumbered and don’t
include them in the table of contents. I myself have used two levels in this document, but only
actually included the first one in my table of contents and also only numbered this first level.
Think about it: numbering suggests structure or even hierarchy. And a finespun numbering
structure suggests to the reader an equally finespun logic which might not actually exist in the
social reality you are trying to describe. For technical publications or textbooks on the other
hand that would be fine.
Avoid overlong chapter headings. Short headings with some explanatory text immediately following are preferable. Don’t forget: long headings also appear in the table of contents in their
full length.
□ Some Settings
Under Tools › Options › OpenOffice.org Writer › Compatibility I would
recommend unchecking three choice boxes:
• Add spacing between paragraphs and tables; unchecking this option ensures
that the set spacing below a paragraph and the set spacing above the paragraph immediately following it do not get added together; instead only the larger of the two spacings takes effect
• Add paragraph and table spacing at tops of pages; unchecking this option
ensures that headings appear right at the top margin, without the usual set spacing separating them from a previous paragraph
• Expand word space on lines with manual line breaks in justified
paragraphs; unchecking this option ensures that inserting a new line using short cut
Shift +
Return will not expand the words on the previous line right up to the right
margin; instead they will be left aligned even in a paragraph with justified alignment
Having removed these three ticks don’t forget to press the button Use as Default so that
these changes apply also to any future documents.
6 Chapter Numbering
Numbering of headings can and should be completely automated. This has for one the
advantage that if you decide to add or remove headings or move chapters and sections around
or even change the level of a heading from level 1 to level 2 or vice versa, you won’t have to
renumber them manually. Furthermore you can do this moving around of chapters and sections using the Navigator – you don’t need to tediously mark text, cut it out and reinsert it in
its new location! Another advantage is when working in groups. The various participants all
5
activate automatic numbering, then they all
get together and insert their various contributions into a new, empty document and
finally, with the help of the Navigator, they
sort the chapters into their final positions
(see sections 9 and10 for more details).
Automated numbering is switched on using
the menu Tools › Outline Numbering
(see illustration 2). Normally you will opt
for simple 1, 2, 3 style, but it could just
as well be A, B, C style or Roman style.
It’s also possible to mix styles, that is, have
Arabic for the first two levels and a), b), c)… for the third – whereby the closing bracket
is simply a Separator After.
When using 1, 2, 3 style it is common to
Show sublevels. This means that heading
5.2.7 for instance will appear exactly as “5.2.7”
and not simply as “7”. When mixing styles, you
could have level 2 with sublevels shown (for
instance “5.2”), but leave level 3 without showing sublevels (so you would get just “c)” instead
of “5.2.c)”).
You might want to turn numbering off for particular headings, for example your introduction at the beginning and
your literature list at the end of your thesis. You can achieve
this by pressing the third button on the pop-up menu (see
illustration 3). Be careful not to press the second button,
because this would switch numbering off or on for all headings of that particular level!
Note: For chapter and section headings it is important to use the method described above. Do
not simply activate numbering (or bullets) directly in the menu as suggested in illustration 4!
This latter alternative is useful only for short lists, but not for chapter or section headings!
Under Position (see illustration 5)
make sure Width of numbering is
sufficient to contain chapter number
plus some spacing so that the heading
number stands out nicely from the
heading text – even if you happen to
have a heading spanning several lines.
Note that a complete numbering of the
“5.7.2” sort requires more space than
an incomplete one such as “c)”.
6
Illustration 2: Activating Outline Numbering 1, 2, 3 style
Illustration 3: Turning off numbering for a particular chapter
Illustration 4: Activating numbering directly from
the menu - good for numbered lists but not for
headings
Illustration 5: Make sure "width of numbering" is large enough
7 Table of Contents
Having told the programme what are your headings and having activated their automatic numbering, you can now insert an automatically generated Table of Contents: Insert ›
Indexes and Tables › Indexes and Tables.
In the pop-up menu you can Evaluate up to Level of your choice. So you might well
have four levels of headings in your text but
choose to include only the
uppermost two levels. In
this present document I
have chosen to evaluate
only up to Level 1, thus
ignoring subsection headings. To update your table
of contents simply rightclick on it and choose
Update Table/Index.
□ Alignment
As you can see in illustrations 6 and 9 the numbering of the second level is aligned right under
the entry of the first level creating a kind of ladder effect. For this to work properly you need,
however, to have automatic chapter numbering turned on, allowing you to insert an extra Tab
stop between the Chapter number and the chapter Entry.
By default the table of contents contains only the following four Entries (see illustration 7):
• Chapter number: E#
• Entry: E
• Tab stop (usually right aligned and with dots as filling): T
• Page number: #
You need to add a Tab
stop in between the
E# and the E, leaving
the Tab stop posi-
tion at 0.00cm (the
actual position will be
defined later on in the
style pertaining to that
table of contents’
level). Press All to
ensure that this setting applies to all levels. (Note: If you happen to inadvertently insert an
entry you don’t want, just click on it once and press Del)
7
Illustration 6: Note the alignment
Illustration 7: The 4 standard entries. Add a Tab stop between E# and E.
When your table of contents appears,
you will notice that most of the entries
have been moved to the right with the
dotted tab stops in the wrong place.
This is due to the value 0,0cm which
you left untouched in the previous
step.
Now you need to right click on a level
1 table of contents’ entry and choose
the option Edit paragraph style…
Under the tab Indents & Spacing
change value of Indent › Before
spacing to 0,80cm and that of Indent › First line to -,80cm (negative value) (see
illustration 8 and table 2).
Repeat these steps for the second level, but this time using the values 1,8cm and -1,00cm.
In case you have a third level, use values 3,00cm and -1,20cm.
The individual settings for indenting will depend of
course on the kind of chapter numbering you have
chosen. For instance if you have a), b), c) style for
your third level, that is subsections, and have decided
not to Show sublevels, then of course you will need
less room than for example for the much longer “5.7.2”
kind of numbering (again see illustration 9). And if no
numbering at all, then again differing values.
The important concept to keep in mind is that you
need the positive indenting to bring the cursor to its first
position for the actual entry E, and a negative indenting
to accommodate the chapter number E# (see illustration 9).
Note also that when choosing your indentation it’s better to go for generous values. If you
choose too small values, then your numbering won’t fit in and you will find your right dotted
tab will appear before the entry instead of between entry and page number.
Indent before text Negative indent First
line
Spacing before
paragraph
1st level 0.80 cm -0.80 cm 0.4 cm
2nd level 1.80 cm -1.00 cm 0.2 cm
3rd level 3.00 cm -1.20 cm 0.2 cm
Table 2: Indentation needed for first three levels when using full sub-levels like "5.7.2"
□ Other Indices and Tables
Other indices can be generated apart from the table of contents. The same steps apply – you
only need to change the Type to whatever is required, e.g. an Index of tables or an
8
Illustration 8: Setting the amount of indenting needed in "Contents 1"-style
Illustration 9: Abstract view of indenting – indentation
depends on width of chapter number
Illustration index. The various tables, illustrations and so on in your text need to have a
Caption, which will then appear in the index. You could combine several indices into one
naming it “Illustrations and Tables”. For this to work your tables’ caption would have to be
fitted into the category of illustrations.
8 Outline
Sometimes you might be asked to hand in an outline of your work in advance of the actual
homework or thesis. You can use chapter headings for this purpose, then generate a table of
contents as described above though removing the last two entries (punctuated tab stop and
page number), leaving just chapter number and name. Then just replace the title “Table of
Contents” with “Outline”. Finally place your outline on a new page using Ctrl + Return, add
pertinent information at top of page (name, theme etc.) and print out this one page.
9 Navigating your Text
From the menu View choose Navigator (or simply press
F5). The Navigator looks a bit like a table of contents, but it
serves a completely different purpose. Whereas the table of
contents is part of the document and will get printed along
with all the rest, the navigator is not part of the document.
Rather it is an electronic key which allows you to manipulate
the document.
Now press the small black triangle next to the category
Headings. You will then see all your existing chapter Head-
ings. Clicking on any one of them will highlight it. Doubleclicking on it will bring you right to the corresponding passage in the text. So it’s not necessary any more to scroll
down (or up) to it.
A click on the Double Arrow Up-Icon will move the whole
chapter including subsections, footnotes, illustrations etc. up – what OpenOffice calls promoting
a chapter (see illustration 10). So chapter 5 for example will swap places with chapter 4. Conversely using the Double Arrow Down. Using the Double Arrow Right will lower the level
of a chapter heading down to a section heading, for instance chapter 5 to section 4.x. Conversely using the Double Arrow Left.
Apart from headings, the navigator also lists graphics, tables, hyperlinks and many other
objects you can easily jump to with a double-click.
Unlike the table of contents, the Navigator updates itself automatically.
The Navigator is especially useful in the context of group work – see section 10.
9
Illustration 10: Here you see all your headings,
which you can move up or down
10 Group Work
More and more students have to give in group papers. Up to four or even more authors might
be involved.
To facilitate the joining together of the various contributions do the following:
• agree on certain general parameters so as to ensure overall uniformity of document,
e.g. limit yourselves to a maximum of two levels of headings
• enable automatic chapter numbering (see section 6)
• make sure all participants use the Text body-style for the Text Body and under no cir-
cumstances the Default-style!
• be sure to completely avoid any manual formatting, always apply styles and make sure
all members of the group apply the same styles with the same names for the same purposes and with the same formatting
Joining the various contributions in one document is then only a matter of a couple minutes:
• open a new file
• dump all the contributions in any order
• using the Navigator sort chapters as appropriate
• create your front page and generate your table of contents
Of course you can always make adjustments a at later stage. See also Section 14 to discover an
easy way to export styles for later use by yourself or other members of your work group.
□ Individual Headers for Each Contributor?
Who made what contribution has of course to be registered. There are basically three options:
1. Place a list of the authors right under the table of contents with the chapters they
authored in brackets.
2. Put the authors’ names in brackets inside the chapter headings.
3. Put the authors’ names in the page header.
This last option requires each author to have his or her own individual Page Style. These
might be named Shila, Leila and Peter. These various page styles are all provided with a
header to later accommodate author’s name and page number. This involves the following
steps:
• open Menu Format › Styles and Formatting (F11)
• click on the 4
th
icon to the right to list all page styles
• right-click on the Default-Style
• select Modify…
10
• make all the appropriate changes applicable to your standard default pages, e.g. a left
margin of 3cm and of course a activate the header to accommodate author’s name
and page number
• place the cursor somewhere on your first page of text and double-click on the page
format Default to actually apply it to your page
• on the top right hand corner of the pop-up menu
click the small black triangle pointing downwards
and chose the first option New Style from
Selection (see illustration 13)
• give your new style the name of one of the group
members, say Leila
• go back to your document and place the cursor at the very end of the last piece of text
belonging to the whole group
• go to menu Insert › Manual Break and
choose the newly created Style Leila (see illustration 12)
• place cursor in Leila’s Page Header and write her
name left aligned
• remove the tab stop (looks like a ┴) from the
ruler above by “pulling” it down and away
• press the tab key to move the cursor to the right margin
• Insert › Fields › Page Number
• repeat the procedure for all group members
□ Checking the final result
Having the final result checked by one or two persons in the group might be a good idea.
More on that in section 11.
11 Proofreading
You will probably want someone to have a look at your thesis or any other really important
paper before handing it in. At the same time you would most likely also want to see any
changes or suggestions he or she may have before either accepting or rejecting them, and not
simply rely on blind faith. I myself do that regularly with other translators I cooperate with.
This function works as follows:
• you send the finished text to the corrector
• she opens the file and chooses the menu Edit › Changes › Record as well as
Show (from this point on any additions or deletions she makes are marked in colour)
• she mails you your file with her changes
11
Illustration 11: 4th icon to the right for page
formatting
Illustration 12: Choose your newly created page style
"Leila"
• you save your file under a new name to be on the safe side (see section 41)
• you open your file and choose the menu Edit › Changes › Accept or Reject;
• a list of changes pops up which you can click on and either Accept or Reject
(alternatively you can accept or reject changes directly in your text using the right
mouse button)
• if several people are involved as correctors, each one should have registered their
name under Tools › Options › OpenOffice.org › User Data. This way, any
changes made by any one of the correctors will carry not only date and time of the
change but also the name of the corrector. Each corrector will have his or her own
colour marking
12 Paragraph Style “Text Body”
Now at last we can talk about the
Text Body, the actual content, the
real substance of any lengthy document. Like all other elements, the
text body has its own specific paragraph style, appropriately named
Text body.
Any paragraph can be made into
Text body using the short cut
Ctrl + 0. Right clicking such a
paragraph offers you the option
Edit paragraph style… which
in turn brings up a pop-up menu where you can make a number of adjustments to your paragraph style.
By default Text body allows for a Spacing below paragraph of 0,21mm, which is
exactly 6pt – which in turn is exactly half the hight of a standard 12pt font. This very
modest spacing is nevertheless enough to highlight the start of a new paragraph. It helps to
lighten the overall impression.
*
A typical setting for your body text might well be Line spacing of 1.5 lines (see illustration 13). Also you will probably want your text to be justified, meaning that it be
aligned to both left and right margins (unlike headings or a poem, which you would want to be
left aligned with ragged margins). If you do choose Alignment justified, then you
will also need to activate automatic hyphenation (Text flow › Hyphenation › Automat-
ically). Automatic hyphenation is important in order to avoid large gaps in case a long word
doesn’t fit at the end of the line and gets moved to the next line so that the remaining words
sprawl right up to the right margin. Here you can augment the Characters at end of
* Another alternative – one often used in books – is instead to indent the first line by say 3mm. But then you
would need an extra paragraph style for those paragraphs immediately following a heading, which don’t need
any indentation.
12
Illustration 13: Paragraph style "Text Body" for main text
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