How to customize header and footer

[arkadian]

Hi guys,

I am finishing off my book and alas I never used a “master document” because I couldn’t work it out how to use it Never mind that now.

What I would like to do is to change SOME header and footers, in particular:

1. at the beginning of the book I have some blank pages, so, nothing needed there
2. Then I have the copyright page, same as before
3. bio notes on myself
4. title page
5. Index
   From then on I have the “normal” book. Nothing needed there.
6. At the end of the book I have another couple of blank pages.
   (Why can’t I make a list???)

What I need to do is to customize header and footer for all the above pages, without breaking what is already there in the book. What is the easiest way to do it? I have been faffing with changing the page style, but I cannot make the changes stay where I would like them to, and more often than not they just start infiltrating the rest of the book.

For now the beginning of the book has the “default style” header and that carries on till the end of the first chapter where we have “Header (converted 1)”. Then every chapter has a “different” header all the way to "header (converted 5).

Am I making any sense?

Thanks in advance :=)

[Regina]

Headers and footers, including there content, are part of the page layout. For each kind of header/footer you have to define a page style. Set the cursor then to the top left in the text area of the first page to get a special header/footer. Click item paragraph in the context menu. On tab Text flow check Page break and with paragraph style and select the appropriate style from the list. You might want to read http://openoffice-uni.org/openoffice-uni-en.pdf or a similar guide for LibreOffice.

[arkadian]

HHmmm… you lost me there (no surprise, though…)
I click on the header and I get on “Format header”, but I cannot find what you are saying. So I right click on the mouse and click on “Edit Paragraph Style” and then I do find “Text flow” and “page break”, although they don’t seem to have any effect…
Not clear about the “Paragraph style” bit (in case it is relevant, I am on a MAC).
The doc you linked doesn’t mention headers.
Why is it so difficult to deal with headers and footers???

[arkadian]

OK, I think I have cracked it… I’ll write it here so I don’t forget.

1. I go to “Style and formatting” (cmd+T on my computer) and click on the icon “Page Styles” (forth from the left on my screen). There I click on, say, “Default” and then right click and “New”. There I define a new style, say “BooBoo” with Next Style “BooBoo”

2. On top of the page after the change I wish to make I go to Insert/manual break and I select “Page break” and immediately below on “Style” I click on “BooBoo”. Now a new blank page should appear on my doc with the associated style “BooBoo”. Here I can define header and footer as I see fit. however…

3. if you want to change the page numbering you have to do it BEFORE you insert the page break. Under “Style” you will find a check box (“New page number”) and a box where you say what page number you wish to start at.

I am still not clear how you actually manage to move from Style “BooBoo” to the “default” style that perhaps is being used in the rest of the book, but faffing with three different styles I somehow managed to cover the pages I needed…

Am I making any sense? Probably not… I don’t know if this is the best way of doing it, but it seems to work on my doc.

[arkadian]

Small update… After I closed and reopened the doc the headers had changed… The styles had a different order and I had to re-enter most of the content in the headers. No biggie, but annoying. At least the behaviour that I was interested in was maintained.