Crash and Undesired Top Margin When Applying Two Columns to the at the end of document Footnotes in Writter

Description: When formatting the document’s footnotes at the end of the documentin LibreOffice,

when I want that footnotes to use two columns, an undesired writer app bug break happens.

When i restore the document, the changes appear though, but I realize that a top margin appears on top of the index 2 columns.

This issue does not occur when the index is set to use a single column. The extra margin disrupts the formatting consistency, making the layout appear incorrect.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Open a LibreOffice document with an existing table of contents (index).
  2. Right-click the index and select “Edit Index/Table.”
  3. Navigate to the “Columns” tab and set the number of columns to 2.
  4. Apply the changes and observe the top margin of the index.

Expected Behavior: The top margin of the index should remain consistent regardless of whether 1 column or 2 columns are applied.

Actual Behavior: An extra top margin is introduced when applying two columns to the index, which is not present when a single column is used.

Environment:

  • LibreOffice version: tested in 6.4 and 7.6
  • Operating System: Linux Mint 20

Additional Notes: This issue affects document formatting and layout, particularly in professional or academic documents. Adjusting styles or formatting manually does not consistently resolve the problem.