Change Table setting for whole document

[JohnB47]

Version: 24.8.6.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 6d98ba145e9a8a39fc57bcc76981d1fb1316c60c
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (10.0 build 19045); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-GB (en_GB); UI: en-GB
Calc: CL threaded

I have a genealogy program which can generate reports and I can save those as rtf documents, then save as Word type documents.

The reason for this process is that, at the end of the report, various sources (citations) appear and sometimes the source header becomes detached from the source image (a jpeg). There is no way, within the report itself, to keep these items together, so the header is sometimes at the bottom of one page and the source image is on the next page.

The process of saving as rtf and then converting is to allow me to manually join the header to the image. It also allows me to change some of the text, which is not always possible before the report is generated (the genealogy program generates many sentences itself from the stored data).

The reports appear to produce the text etc. as multiple tables and I can achieve what I want by doing the following but this is on a ‘one at a time’ basis:

I can place the cursor on a header, then right click and choose ‘Table Properties’ and on the Text Flow tab, I untick “Allow Table to split…”.

This joins the header and image but only for that one table.

My question is, is there a way for me to do what I want for the whole document, rather than having to do it one table at a time?

I can see a setting in Tools/Options/Libreoffice Writer/Table “Do not Split” but this doesn’t work - I believe this is for new tables, rather than existing ones.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

[ajlittoz]

There is unfortunately no solution because there is no true table style in Writer. (The existing table “styles” are no styles at all; they are equivalent to a collection of macros which are fired in various circumstances and add direct formatting.)

In addition, your original document is RTF which has no Writer-like styles and requires conversion from alien format, causing some data loss.

PS: out of curiosity, which is your genealogy program? Have you control on the report creation process? Can you configure report data encoding? – I’m thinking of configuring it to create .odt instead.

[fpy]

FAQ

Modifier le style de tableau par défaut

a priori non : How do you define default table and cell borders that apply to all existing tables and all new tables? Table styles questions

[JohnB47]

Thank you. Not to worry, I can do it one table at a time.

The genealogy program I use is called Family Historian and there is no setting within the Report production process to allow ‘keep together’ of header, source image etc. - I’ve had this confirmed on the forum. Apparently it’s a well known weakness and is often mentioned.

Reports can be created then saved as pdf, web page, Word Processor Document (rtf) and Custom Type. I have no idea what custom type is - I must investigate.

Edit: I’ve just checked and found this explanation of Custom Report:

"This is not a file format as such. When you save a report as a custom report type, you are creating a new type of report, which you can re-use later. "

A bit confusing. I suppose it means I can generate a Report, make some Options adjustments then save that as a snapshot file and call it up at a later date to either do more work on it or print it. It’s more like a ‘Save As’ option which just allows it to be given a name (‘Save As’ doesn’t exist elsewhere).