Headers above Selected Pages

Writing a PhD and I am making use of running headers (left page chapter title, right page section title). Everything works great except for the fact that the headers are also present on chapter pages when I put the book together (individual chapers/files had the ‘not on first page’ option active). The headings for the Conclusion also run on in the Bibliography (Which has it’s own heading as ‘Bibliography’)
Any tips on how I can keep headers from these first pages and have the headers correctly displayed above the Bibliography?

Headers are a property of page styles. As a consequence, having a different header means a different page organisation (even if this reduces to a mere change of header). In the case of chapters, thank to field insertion, you can make do with a single set of page styles common to all chapters. I recommend having separate sets for cover page, TOC, indexes, bibliography and back material.

You might have already used the shortcuts provided in page style definition with [not] Same content on first page and [not] Same content left/right check boxes which generate internally associated child page styles. However, I find this capability rather limiting for elaborate documents and I prefer to manually create first, left and right style pages where I can fully control all attributes.

To address your question, you define all three page styles with identical margins. Remembering that LO Writer headers and footers are laid out inside the text area (not inside the margins), you request headers from all three styles. The only difference is you write no text (empty paragraph) in the ‘first’ page header instead of the chapter and “section” titles in the others, so that you keep the same size for main text area. By the way, these data can be automatically inserted with fields, making your styles dynamic and usable in all chapters without the need of customising them to individual chapters (thus sparing the pain of it).

‘First’ page style is chained to the ‘left’ one which is chained in its turn to the ‘right’ one which is chained back to ‘left’, closing the loop. This way, you get automatic alternation of page styles when pages are full and a new one is needed.

When you need to start a new sequence (TOC, new chapter, indexes, bibliography), you must insert a page break to the desired page style. This can be done either from an adequately crafted paragraph style, or manually with Insert>Manual Break and choosing the required options.

Bibliography is a bit special since you must make provision for a page break before inserting the bibliography. Modifying bibliography layout is a bit tricky. Search this site for related questions.

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