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Libreoffice Writer Cookbook

Here are some notes on things we have had to do in Libreoffice when creating classroom handouts.

Escaping from Tables

If the the last item on a page is a table, it can be difficult to insert something after it. The trick is to move the cursor to the far bottom right cell of the table and press Alt-Enter.

If the page begings with a table and you want to insert something before it, go to the top left cell and press Alt-Enter.

Using Stylesheets

Each handout should have a document title at the top with a style of Heading 1. The style of each subheading should be Heading 2. Neither heading should contain manual formatting.

The use of blank lines to increase vertical space should be avoided. Instead use Format ⟶ Paragraph ⟶ Indents & Spacing to add more Spacing either Above Paragraph or Below Paragraph.

Inserting SVG Images

  1. From the menu choose Insert ⟶ Image ⟶ From File
  2. Choose the file and press the Open button.

A copy of the image will be stored inside the ODT file. A PNG fall-back image will also be created and stored along with it.

SVG Image Performance Problems

Starting with version 4.0 Libreoffice has a serious problem with the way it renders SVG images in the page. Above a certain number of images or a certain level of complexity it slows to a crawl. Users who complain about this on the Internet are frequently advised to increase the size of the graphics cache to 128MB, but this does not seem to help. There is a bug report open since September 2014. Though the bug causes Writer to lock up for seconds or minutes at a time it is categorized as of “low minor” importance!

Creating PDF Forms

  1. Go to View ⟶ Toolbars and enable Form Controls.
  2. Toggle the Design Mode button on on the form controls toolbar.
  3. Click on one of the form element buttons on the form controls toolbar.
  4. Click and drag on the screen to draw the control.
  1. If the anchor text already exists, select it.
  2. Choose Insert ⟶ Hyperlink from the main menu.
  3. If you are linking to another document at ReadyRussian.org, choose Document in the left-hand pane. Click the folder to the right of the Path field and select the document. Otherwise choose Internet and type the URL into the Target field.
  4. Enter the anchor text into the Text field if it is not there already.
  5. Press OK
  1. Put the cursor just before the hyperlink.
  2. Choose Edit ⟶ Hyperlink from the main menu.
  1. Put the cursor just before the hyperlink.
  2. Very carefully right click at the same location.
  3. Choose Remove Hyperlink from the context menu.

Adding Index Entries

  1. Place cursor at beginning of word or if it is a phrase, select it
  2. Choose Insert ⟶ Table of Contents and Index ⟶ Index Entry
  3. If you would like the entry to appear under a heading, enter a 1st key and possibly 2nd key (for up to two levels)
  4. If this is the best treatment of the term, then check the Main Entry box
  5. Press the Insert button
  6. If you wish, leave the dialog box open, select a different word, and return to step 3

Setting Variables in the Text

  1. Choose Insert ⟶ Fields ⟶ Other from the main menu.
  2. Choose the Variables tab.
  3. Set Type to Set variable.
  4. Enter the variable Name. If it is already set elsewhere in the text, you may choose its name from the Select list.
  5. Enter the desired Value.
  6. Press the Insert button (only once).
  7. Press the Close button.

Editing Variables in the Text

  1. Move the cursor to the small gray marker which indicates that a variable is set.
  2. Choose Edit ⟶ Fields from the main menu.
  3. Change the value and press the OK button.

Removing Variables from the Text

  1. Move the cursor to the small gray marker which indicates that a variable is set.
  2. Delete it using the Delete or Backspace key as if it were a character.

Libreofice Writer stores the revision date of the ODT file in the metadata automatically. You can insert this date in the document automatically. To do this:

  1. Go to Insert ⟶ Field ⟶ More Fields
  2. Select the DocInformation tab
  3. Choose Modified from the left-hand column and Date from the center column.
  4. Press the Insert button.

A grey box will be inserted at the cursor position. If the document has already been saved, then the date will be displayed in this grey box.

To display the document revision date at the top or bottom of each page:

  1. Go to Format ⟶ Page Style, select the Header or Footer tab, check the box to turn the header or footer on, and press the OK button.
  2. Returning to the page, click in the header or footer area (depending on which you enabled) to move the cursor into it.
  3. Go to Insert ⟶ Field ⟶ More Fields, and insert the Modified field using the procedure described above.
  4. Insert other appropriate fields such as page number. Use tabs to space them out.

Of course, the file modification date changes whenever you save the document, whether or not you have made a meaningful change. So you may want to have a date or version number which you control and change whenever you make a revision to a document which you consider non-trivial. To do this you can create a custom document property which will be stored in the document metadata.

To create a custom document property:

  1. Got to File ⟶ Properties
  2. Select the Special Properties tab
  3. Click on the Add Property button and add what you need

You can then insert these custom properties in the text, header, or footer:

  1. Place the cursor in the text, header, or footer where you want the special property to be displayed.
  2. Go to Insert ⟶ Field ⟶ More Fields
  3. In the left hand pane click on Custom to expand it revealing your custom properties.
  4. Highlight the custom property you want and press the Insert button.

Inserting Special Characters and Accent Marks

Go to Insert ⟶ Special Character to open Writer’s built-in character map. Find the character you want, possibly by using the search function, and press the Insert button.

You can also insert special characters using any of the methods described in our article Entering Special Characters.

Document Thumbnails

By default Libreoffice takes a screenshot of the first page of the document and saves it in the ODT file as a 198x256 pixel PNG file with the name “Thumbnails/thumbnail.png”. In theory these images can be used instead of a generic icon to represent the file in a file manager. It is unclear whether any file managers actually use it.

If you wish to disable the embeded thumbnails, go to Tools ⟶ Options ⟶ Libreoffice ⟶ Advanced ⟶ Expert Configuration and search for “GenerateThumbnail”. Set it to false. This will reduce the size of the file by about 15000 bytes which can be significant since the rest of the ODT file may not be much larger than that.

Importing Address Lists

Open the CVS file. When the import dialog comes up, click on the ZIP code column in the example and change the column type to Text.

Using Mail Merge

Here is a simple way to do a mail merge:

  1. Create a list of names and address in tabular format. You can use Libreoffice Calc or Base or a CSV file.
  2. Open your document in Write and go to Edit ⟶ Exchange Database.
  3. Click on Browse, and select the file created in step one.
  4. Find the file in the list of available Available Databases, select a sheet, and press Define.
  5. Open the View menu and turn on Data Sources. A list of data sources and a table showing the data will appear at the top.
  6. Find the columns you want and drag the column headers into your document.

When you connect databases in Libreoffice, they remain connnected indefinitely. To disconnect them, go to Tools ⟶ Options in the menu. Then open the LibreOffice Base category in the left-hand panel and choose Databases. Select the unwanted database connection and press Delete.

More information about mail merging can be found in the Libreoffice Writer Guide Chapter 11.

Hiding Blank Lines in Mail Merge Labels

Multiple Mail Merge Labels Per Page

You can print multiple labels per page by repeating the template. However, you must insert an invisible “next record” field in front of all templates after the first. Otherwise you will get a whole page of labels for each address.

To insert the “next record” field, go to Insert ⟶ Field ⟶ Other. Switch to the Database tab and choose Next Record and press Insert.

Toggling Display of Hidden Paragraphs

There used to be an option in the View menu for toggling the display of hidden paragraphs, but it was removed at some point. To get it back, go to Options ⟶ Customize ⟶ Menus. There is you find the command and insert it into the View menu.

Import CSV File with ZIP Codes

When you open a CSV file, an import dialog will appear. If you simply press OK, the ZIP codes will be converted into decimal numbers which means that the leading zero of East-Coast ZIP codes will be lost. To prevent this, right click on the heading of the ZIP code column and change the type to Text.

Macros

David Chappell
A computer programmer with 25 years of experience using and creating web technology. He enjoys applying his skills to the creation of language-teaching materials.