Delete inserted envelope. How!&**???

[joincto]

How do I delete an envelope once inserted into a document? I have tried for he best part of half an hour without success.

I am sorry, but I really cannot avoid a rant here. I attach to a document an envelope (which also, if the rest were not bad enough, never prints the way I want it to). Then I find:

1. The letter itself never prints; only the envelope. Print preview shows bot parts, but print shows, and prints, only
   the envelope.
2. There is no way I can find to delete the envelope
3. And there is nothing, not one word, in the writer 6.0 manual about how one can delete the insertion.

The whole thing lacks any kind of visual clue. I have seen, on the net, people ranting about this and other perceived shortcomings. It is not enough to say “the software is free”. No, it is not. I have contributed. I have expended effort to learn the software (more especially the spreadsheet part). How can the manual be so incomplete (either in indexing or, peraps it is the cross referencing), that it gives no clue how do undo what I have just done?

[mikekaganski]

What “Insert Envelope” does is adds a first page (inserts a new leading paragraph, and sets the previous first paragraph to have page break before); sets second page to have its page style explicitly defined, and first (newly added) page to have a format chosen for the envelope; and adds a couple of text boxes anchored to the first page, and positioned as you defined.

Any user, having read some manuals or not, can use Undo (Ctrl+Z) to “undo what I have just done”.

Also it doesn’t mean if you “contributed” (whatever that could mean) or not. That “the manual” even exists just means that some people have contributed themselves to create, design, translate, and keep relatively up-to-date (as their free time (!) permits) that stuff. They did what they thought was needed; and when one sees that something is missing, everyone can come and say “Here is my article on a topic I created when stumbled with a problem; I offer it for inclusion into the documentation”. Or one can write things like you did, and … be just wrong with your expectations.

[joincto]

I appreciate the explanation, though ctrl-Z would not have helped me much after trying to get rid of the first page for many minutes trying other things while availed nought. And the printing?

[mikekaganski]

Heh, but that doesn’t mean that a documentation needs to explicitly mention: “you dear reader; at this point, I explicitly declare, that just as with anything else, the expected way to undo the Envelope insertion is to use Undo command”.

Anyway: I specifically mentioned things that are done by the operation. So seeing that a page was inserted with a different layout, you may undo the effects piece-by-piece: first, remove the “insert-break-with page style” from the very first paragraph of the envelope; remove the two text boxes; remove the first paragraph to remove the extra page. If needed, re-apply used page style (if you used some different from default).

[mikekaganski]

Wrt printing - which version of LibreOffice you use? Which operating system? what are the settings in Print dialog? it might be some bug, or some combination of settings … hard to tell - please provide more information.

[joincto]

I am using LibreOffice 6.2.4 on os x 10.14.4.
In the print preview, since I have two pages, it shows that there are two pages. But print tells me that it is going to print 1/1 pages.

[Rich_Marton]

I too have this problem (deleting an envelop) running macOS 11.6.4 and LO ver. 7.2.5.2.
“mikekaganski” provided a very good explanation of what, exactly, happens when inserting an envelop. If not already done so this or similar expiation should be included in the LO help files. If Mike is reading this know that I appreciate your explanation.

I think “mike” may have lost the context of your problem when he suggested simply doing “ctl-Z” to undo the insertion of the envelop. I don’t know how deep (how many) commands the “undo” command can “undo” but if you have been trying for anything more than 5 minutes the command to inert the envelop may be long lost.

I know what you meant by “contributed”, I have too. For those that may not understand, in this context contributed means donation, as in money, to the LO foundation.

[ajlittoz]

The problem mainly arises when you want to delete the envelope just after opening the document. The undo history is then empty and Ctrl+Z will do nothing. But you can put your cursor in the envelope and use the Del key to progressively delete the envelope elements.

Warning, though! When you delete the page break between the envelope and the letter, you also delete the page style switch from Envelope to the one for the letter. You must reassign the previous page style to restore the “geometry” of the letter (just a double-click on the required style in the page style list of the side style pane.