i want some pages numbered, some not

[MikeM1000]

Hi. If you look at any printed novel, you see that the front matter is not numbered. Different than non-fiction books, where front matter is numbered in small roman.

Having much experience with Word, I can’t imagine that it’s possible to pull this off, but it’s what I have to do using LibreOffice.

Appreciate any gurus/nerds with good ideas.
Mike

[gabix]

In addition to Mike Kaganski’s answer, read these tutorials:

https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=44607

https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=1221

[mikekaganski]

Heh… It is also possible with Word.

In Writer, there are several options involved. First - a simple case when you only need one (front) page to have different header or footer (the page numbers are in special parts of page named headers and footers). When you want only that, you simply go to page properties, enable relevant page part (header/footer) by checking boxes on corresponding tabs, and also uncheck Same content on first page. Since you would have different headers/footers for the first and the rest pages, you would then be able to put page number field to the second page (which will, naturally, be repeated further), while not on first page.

But in more involved cases, when you have several leading pages with one style (e.g., table of content), after which go pages with a different style, you would need to use a feature conveniently named page styles. Each page style in Writer has its own full set of formatting (including size, orientation, margins, background, headers and footers). You define (create) required page styles, and then tell Writer that starting with this or that paragraph, you need this or that page style.

So, your procedure would look like this:

1. Open Styles (F11).
2. At the top of the popped-up sidebar, click on Page Styles button.
3. Right-click in the styles list area, and choose New... (there’s also a menu for that in the right part of toolbar where you have chosen Page Styles).
4. In the Page Styles dialog, on Organizer tab, define the name for the new style (e.g., “ToC”).
5. Define the other properties for the page on the other tabs, like size or margins, and, if you don’t need headers/footers, make sure you don’t check relevant checkboxes. If you need them, but you need a different numbering (like Romans), then select relevant numbering style in Layout Settings section on Page tab (and don’t forget to turn headers and/or footers on, to put corresponding field there later).

• It is important to select numbering here, and not to do that in page number fields, because numbering settings of the page style are taken into account later when you create different cross-references and tables.

6. After you have defined and saved your new style, you need to assign it to a part of your document. Page style is used starting from a paragraph you assigned it to, till another paragraph that has another page style assigned. So, go to the very first paragraph that you want to have the ToC page style, and go to that paragraph’s properties (menu Format→Paragraph...), Text Flow tab, and select Breaks→Insert→Page→Before→With page style:→"ToC". Also optionally set the starting page number.

• This will set all the following pages until the end of the document to have this page style, unless you have other paragraphs with page styles below. That’s OK for now.

7. Now go to the very first paragraph of your normal text (that needs to be on differently-styled pages), and repeat the step 6, this time choosing “Default style” page style, or whatever style you could have created for this text run.
8. Now you customize the headers/footers of each part of your document, and they will have different header/footer content.

You also can set different left/right pages, create differently-oriented pages, and in general, be as flexible and creative as required using page styles to make your document look as you need.

[MikeM1000]

Thanks Kaganiski. I’ll see if I can get it working this way. Appreciate your help.
Mike

[MikeM1000]

Kaganiski,
I have good news and bad news.
I followed your instructions and it all worked. I even applied the page format with no header to the title pages for chapters, then reset the paragraph at the top of the 2nd pages of chapters back to the page format with headers and page numbers. It worked! Your good detail helped a lot!
But, when I sht the file down then reopened, in the page formats, my one custom format, which I called converted1, had multiplied!

[MikeM1000]

Now there were 20 “converted” page formats! Not only that, but each chapter title page had been assigned these new formats, so the page number showed along with header text. Also, this header info showed up against the top of the page.
Needless to say I reverted back the last good version of the doc.
Help!

[mikekaganski]

Don’t know if you need some help now after several days; but just FYI: I couldn’t get a notification about your request: you have commented your own answer; and didn’t mention my username properly (using @mikekaganski syntax). So sorry - but I couldn’t reply in a timely fashion; and only accidentally came across this now.

[mikekaganski]

As to your problem - you seem to be using a non-native file format? Of course, it’s impossible to save page styles properly to Word formats, because Word formats simply lack the required functionality (there’s no page style concept there). So - “best effort” is used when saving to DOC(X), and the warning about possible loss when saving is not just to annoy you.