Header question

Hi,
I never could get headers to work in LibreOffice as I found them very fiddly. Now I find that I have to find a way for my latest work. I truly hope someone can help me.

I already have a manuscript which is nearing completion, and the only thing it really lacks are headers.
I have prologue, foreword, contents etc which don’t require headers, but everything else is lacking them.

The format of the main body is:
The title of the chapter on a page by itself, centered (odd numbered page, no header needed)
Blank page (even page number - no header)
Text (odd numbered page - header should be chapter title)
Text (even numbered page - header should be publication title)
etc.

Then the same for chapter 2 but with the chapter name on the odd pages. If there is a blank even numbered page between the end of chapter 1 and chapter 2, it shouldn’t have a header. (Chapters always start on odd numbered pages)
In the past, I’ve had headers all the way through my work, even for blank pages but the text has always been just the title of the book. Now I’d like something that looks better than this.

Sorry if this is a kindergarten question. I’ve tried reading the manual pages but they seem very complicated.

Best wishes

Paul

You clearly describe the high-level structure of your document. Every time you have a page or group of pages with a dedicated role (and an associated layout), you define a specific page style to format the page or group. You are encouraged to read at least the built-in help on this topic and, better, the freely downloadable guide.

Meanwhile, here is a short summary.

Create different pages styles for prologue, foreword and contents. Have you forgotten the cover?

Your chapters need two page styles: one for the title, one for the running pages. Your specification to have the title on an odd page and the first page on an odd page too prevents from doing it with a single page style.

You can restrict usage in the Page tab of the style with the Page layout drop-down menu. Select Only right for the chapter title style.

Headers and footers are enabled through the page style tab Header and Footer. Once this is done, you can add any text in them from a page formatted with the style.

The page style for running pages is “smarter”. You can use built-in Default Style (this is already the case). In the Header tab, uncheck the Same content on left and right page so that you can have different headers on odd and even pages. These headers are built with fields so that the right content is automatically generated.

  • Chapter title

    Easy, provided the chapter title is formatted with paragraph style Heading 1. Insert>Field>More Fields, Document tab. Type is Chapter and Format is Chapter name (or another one fitting your needs).

    You can mix fixed text and fields. You are limited only by your imagination.

  • Publication title

    I recommend storing the publication title in File>Properties, Description tab, Title field. The publication title is then available everywhere in the document as value for the field Title in DocInformation tab of Insert>Field>More Fields.

    Having the publication title in the properties allows you to change the title in a single location and all the “fielded” occurrences will be automatically updated.

You switch from a page style to another page style with a page break. You can do that in two ways.

  • manually: Insert>Break>Manual Break so that you can choose the next page style and optionally reset the page number

  • automatically: if the next page always starts with the same paragraph style (e.g. the chapter title with Heading 1), you can put the page break in the paragraph style definition (Text Flow tab)

Automatically inserted pages (to abide parity constraints) are fully blank, no header nor footer.

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