How can I access a custom document property in a condition statement?

asked 2012-03-07 00:24:02 +0200

basil.bourque
11 ● 1 ● 3

updated 2012-03-07 01:03:08 +0200

MagicFab
690 ● 5 ● 12 ● 23
http://wiki.documentfound...

The Writer Guide documentation says I can use my own custom document property instead of a variable in a condition statement.

DocInformation fields

“Using document properties to hold metadata and information that changes” on page 363 described how to set up a custom document property. You can use that document property as the variable in your condition statement, or you can create another document property field specifically for conditions.

From: Chapter 14 "Working with Fields" of Writer Guide, page 377 in PDF

How do I use a document property rather than a variable?

When I type the name of the property, in a "Conditional text" function in the Insert Fields Other dialog, I always get the first phrase, never the second. So it seems my conditional test is being ignored or incorrectly always returning True.

After seeing "DocInformation:" displayed when I choose View > Field Names, I tried prepending that to my property name in my Conditional text function, like this: DocInformation:MyDocumentPropertyNameHere But that did not help. I always see the first phrase of the conditional text.

Is there some trick to accessing a Document Property in a function?

I get success when using a variable, so I am not totally confused/stupid.

For example, what would be different in these steps, taken from LibreOffice Help topic "Defining Conditions":

To display conditional text based on a user-defined Variable Choose Insert - Fields - Other, and then click the Variables tab.

1. Choose Insert - Fields - Other, and then click the Variables tab.
2. In the Type list, click "Set Variable".
3. In the Name box, type "Profit".
4. In the Value box, type "5000".
5. Click Insert.
6. Click the Functions tab, and click "Conditional text" in the Type list.
7. In the Condition box, type "Profit < 5000".
8. In the Then box, type "Target is not met".
9. In the Or box, type "Target is met".
10. Click Insert.

To edit the contents of the "Profit" variable, double-click the variable field.

Using LibreOffice LibreOffice 3.5.0rc3 on Mac OS X 10.7.3

Cross-posted to the mailing list.