How Best to do Columnar Q & A Page Setups?

[abrogard]

I am doing school work. They ask a question and then stipulate the format for the reply. By showing the format but without content.

The format here turns out to look like a three column spreadsheet with four rows. I don’t think the number of rows matter here, for this question.

So the columns are supposed to be like from the left: Type, Details, Comments.

So a third of the page each. Three columns, a third of the page each.

The ‘type’ is going to only require a couple of word or so - the details could need a couple or three lines - and the comments also two or three, maybe more.

What’s the best way to do this, would you say?

A table in the document?

A spreadsheet answer cut and pasted into the doc ( we can do that I think? )

Just columns and mark a line under each completed entry?

Or: I have thought - maybe better to throw away their suggested format entirely and do it some other way which is better suited to documents?

[ajlittoz]

The problem is: content in the columns has variable length but rows are the basic blocks of information. Therefore, columns must be synchronised to rows. This leads to the definition of “cells” for content. Using such words as “columns”, "rows, and “cells” calls for a table.

You can then go for a table with 3 columns and a title row. Content rows will be added as needed.

Remember that a cell may content any number of paragraphs, formatted as you like. Then, you break to a new row only when you change “Type”.

I let you, as an exercise, to discover how to allow cells to be split when a page break occurs and how to repeat the title row on every page.

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[Hrbrgr]

@ajlittoz, did you accidentally forget something?

I let you, as an exercise, to discover how to allow cells to be split when a page break occurs and how to repeat the title row on every page.

Where?

[ajlittoz]

@Hrbrgr: I voluntarily kept vague about it to encourage self-research.

We’re talking about table inside a Writer document. The table is not a spreadsheet but tabular presentation of related data (in one row). I don’t know how many rows there are. There is a high probability that there does not remain enough space at the bottom of the page to hold the row (all the more if “Comments” cell contains many paragraphs). Thus two options are possible:

1. let Writer put the page break between rows so that cells are not split; but space left may large, giving the wrong clue that document ends at end of this page

2. ask Writer to split the cells when needed.

If you think I’m too hard on a presumably young newcomer, I’ll recommend consulting the built-in help and looking at Table>Properties.