I am a new user of LibreOffice.
I put together a 154 page book using an old version of Word, which I prefer to new versions because of its ease of use.
About 125 pages of the document are written in two columns, rather like you see in a dictionary. All the pages were numbered from 1-154. (Numbering pages in my old version of Word is very simple and has no need to add a footer space)
After opening the document in LibreOffice Writer, I noticed that a) only the first four pages were numbered and - worst of all - that from page 21 onwards, the entries had shifted and the right-hand column of page 21 was half empty.
There was no page break at that position and I can see no reason why LOW placed the next entries on a new page.
The only way I have found so far of getting things back to normal is to press ENTER on each shifted line or paragraph and it moves it up to where it should be. But doing this on 1,860 entries on over 100 pages is extremely time consuming. After 6 hours I am still doing page 67.
Is there a quicker way to get the remaining entries where they should be without half empty pages ?
Also - is there a quick way to number all pages without having to add a footer space (which takes up too much room) and without having to add each page number individually ?
Thankyou for any help or suggestions.
Quite difficult to tell what’s happening without knowing the technical structure of your document. How are your entry paragraphs made? What is the paragraph style?
There is a fundamental difference between Writer and Word concerning margins: they’re absolutely no-print area in Writer while they contain header/footer in Word. It’s just a matter of simple arithmetic in the page style to get things alike.
If suddenly page numbers disappear from the footer, then you changed the page style (because a page style can have only one footer, the same on every page). Necessarily there is a page break.
I recommend View>Formatting Marks so that you can see the breaks (page, column, paragraph, new line and others).
Please attach a sample file to your question (you can’t attach to a comment) for analysis.
The first four pages are “normal”, the following 120 pages are in two columns. I managed to shift all the two-column entries into their correct place manually and left a bit of room at the bottom of one of the columns to manually add the page number. It was still a bit of a slog (English slang for “hard, tedious work”) but I managed to get in done in time for the deadline. I had a look at the formatting marks but none of the “wrong positions” (i.e. where the partially filled column of text should continue with the next entry, instead of 20 empty lines) had anything other than a new line.
As I mentioned in a previous comment (which disappeared ?!?), I am interested in forensics analysis of your problematic file. If you can manage to have a 10- pages sample, please attach it to your question. If you think it is too confidential to be attached, let’s initiate private mail. If you’re interested, tell me so and I’ll give you instructions.
You should not need to number manually your pages. There are features to do that automatically.
I just tried to add a comment using Edit on my last comment, then “save comment” but it didn’t include the lines I added…
I need to see whether I still have the odt or pdf with the shifted column entries and I can extract some pages for you. I have a feeling that I might only have the pdf. Although the file is not confidential, it is not for the general public. So please send me the “instructions” you mention. Thankyou
The last comment can be edited within the 10 minutes following its post. After that, it is locked and can only be deleted.
Contact me with ajlittoz (at) users (dot) sourceforge (dot) net and I’ll send you my private email. The pdf will be no use. It must be an odt.
I tried to replicate the problem for André and I think I found the solution.
Test 1. Opened a Word .doc with all pages numbered and with over 100 pages in two colums. Saved it as .odt, checked it and everything had shifted and page numbers had disappeared, as described in my first post.
Test 2. Opened a Word .doc with all pages numbered and with over 100 pages in two colums. Saved it as .odt, CLOSED IT,RE-OPENED IT and everything was as it should be, all pages numbered and my two columns pages perfect.
So the solution is, save it, close it, re-open it.