Alternative for Find and Replace in Writer – replace paragraph marks, and much, much more!

On August 11, 2010, in Extensions, Intermediate, OpenOffice.org Writer, Useful Tools, by stephanie
0

Thanks to Solveig Haugland, who has posted about this Fantastic OpenOffice.org Writer extension for searching and replacing carriage returns (two in a row, etc.) with regular expressions, plus much much more.

I’ve installed it, and my days of copying chunks of text to my text editor to do this is over. (I used to cut and paste to text editor as it was faster and easier for me than the regular expressions route as I don’t use regular expressions often and had to keep looking them up).

I suggest you head over to Solveig’s most excellent website to grab a link to the extension, as well as a brief how-to on using it.

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FAQ: How to sort lists in OpenOffice Writer

On August 9, 2010, in Beginners, Easy, FAQ, OpenOffice.org Writer, by stephanie
3

When putting lists together, sometimes we don’t put them in alphabetical or numerical order. Fortunately OpenOffice Writer can help us sort them into order automatically – and relatively easily.

You may have a list that needs sorting - it can be plain text or in bullets, or even within a table

Step 1: Highlight all the text that is to be sorted.

If that text is in a table, highlight the table (it will sort the rows automatically).

Step 2: Select Tools > Sort.

Select Tools > Sort from the menu

Step 3: In the Sort box, select the order by which you want to sort. If you are sorting a table, then Key 1 will be the first condition that will be used to sort, and you can specify the column, Key 2 will be the 2nd condition, etc. For lists, this doesn’t apply.

You will also decide if you want the order to be Ascending (A->Z), or Descending (Z->A) in this box.

Select the sort order and how it is to be sorted

Step 4: Click OK, and your list will be sorted.

And the list is sorted

Update: Now available – FAQ: How to sort lists in OpenOffice Calc, and as a PDF document on Scribd – check out Sorting in OpenOffice Writer and Calc.

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Keyboard Shortcuts for OpenOffice Writer

On April 29, 2010, in OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice.org Writer, Useful Tools, by stephanie
0

I’ve summarised some OpenOffice Writer shortcuts into a single page for printing and keeping at your desk.

Laptop KeyboardThere are a number of keyboard shortcut guides for OpenOffice, however the point of this one is to have it on a single page.

I’m also making the ODT file available – if anyone wishes to add or amend to this in future, please post a link to the new file in the comments section.

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Video on How to Use Writer Templates [OpenOffice Writer]

On January 13, 2010, in General, by stephanie
0

This is quite a useful tutorial on how to integrate templates into your documents for use with OpenOffice writer.

Video on How to Use Writer Templates

Click on the link above to access the tutorial.

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Forcing Line Breaks in Table of Contents

On November 1, 2009, in Beginners, Easy, OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice.org Writer, by stephanie
1

I recently saw a question regarding line breaks in the table of contents – OpenOffice does not allow you to edit a table of contents except through styles. Sometimes the way that long headings are formatted might not be what you desire.

One thing to note about the TOC is that the line breaks that you insert in the heading itself will be reflected in the TOC.

Example:
Putting in a manual line break (Shift + Enter) in this heading:

manual_line_break

will result in a line break appearing in the Table of Contents:

manual_line_break_toc

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Removing Page Breaks – OpenOffice Writer

On July 12, 2007, in Beginners, Easy, OpenOffice.org Writer, by stephanie
2

I have a number of clients who initially have problems understanding the page breaks within OpenOffice. In Microsoft Word we usually insert and then delete using the delete key or backspace.

Page breaks in OpenOffice do require a little bit more fiddling, but once you understand how pagebreaks work, then, in my opinion, you will find this is a more robust solution, giving you more options than the standard Microsoft implementation.

To remove a pagebreak from a document, which may appear like the following, complete the steps below.

Step 1: Click once in the first line on the page that want to remove the page break before. (The first line under the arrow in the image above)

Step 2: Select Format from the top menu, then select Paragraph.

Format, Paragraph

Step 3: Click on the ”Text Flow” tab.

Uncheck the break

Step 4: Uncheck (un-tick) the checkbox next to the work ”Insert” under the heading ”Breaks”. Click on OK.

Your page break will be removed.

Post any questions or problems as comments under this article.

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