Draw - textbox line border

[bod]

In Draw, how do I make a border or line around a text box?
How do I fill a text box?
How do I make it so I can see the borders of all text boxes without making a printable border?

I haven’t even started using other shapes yet.

I cannot fathom how in the online help and forums it is so hard to find this simple function - or reference to say it is not possible.

I find many questions about similar issues in Writer with incomprehensibly technical answers that I can barely interpret for their use of technical terms - which are absolutely valid and might be relevant to anyone who either knows what they refer to but where they are not complimented by a layperson’s version they are accessible only to terms known by people who are presumably developers who know the system inside out. Help forums are largely populated by and for people who DO NOT know the system inside out and thus need on-ramps and signposts.

It’s sad that the Libre Office project will be so much harder for most people to use because the instructions and support make the learning curve so inaccessible.
So much evident time, effort, good intentions and perfectly acceptable if not excellent functioning wasted!

Communicating simply the basic functioning would make the project as accessible as MS Office to newcomers.
Relying on people hunting through poorly organised forum requests and technical jargon-laden answers is an indication that highly technically capable people either don’t know how to communicate simply - possibly because they don’t recognise the level of understanding of the person asking th question, or they assume others are as able to pick up the complexities of LibreOffice, or they don’t appreciate what it’s like to move to a new platform from one that the person knew vary well, which could appear to some as if they don’t care (which would be a shame as that’s a common reason to migrate away from MS) or they don’t want to make it easy for others to get up to speed because of the time and effort they have put in an expect others to have to climb that same mountain.

On that note I do realise I am unable to appreciate the many hours put into the LibreOffice project, the sacrifices and deep, ideological, visionary care and diligence it takes to develop, maintain and share it, and I know this is a bit of an insult to some, but I hope the truth in what I say rings through so that LibreOffice can benefit from and provide the adoption it deserves - mainly (in my mind) for the philosophical intention - hoping that the adoption will support and warrant further technological development - as much as the technological development should be honoured in how it fulfils on but must not disadvantage the intended purpose - philosophical and not-programmable as that might be.

Seriously, thank you to all those who help make this possible and keep up the good work.
My words might seem harsh but it seems the right way to frame my criticism along with my question contrasted against my far greater acknowledgement of what I am impressed by, grateful for and couldn’t do myself.

[EarnestAl]

I think you might find the Draw Guide more structured, download from English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides
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If you are using the ribbon toolbar I suggest to either show the menu by clicking the Menu bar icon to toggle visibility, or replace the ribbon with the Standard toolbar in View - User interface. The ribbon toolbar is quite limiting and limited. Help and instructions here normally refer to the menu.
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Generally, in Draw, right clicking can often provide the relevant command.
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Here is just one way to add a border and background. Note that Text boxes don’t have a non printing outline.

1. Select the text box so the handles show.
2. In the Sidebar, select the top icon with tooltip Properties
3. Under the heading Line, change from None to desired line style. Choose colour and width to suit
4. Under the heading Area, change from None to Colour (or other fill) and select a suitable colour

Cheers, Al
BTW a text box without content will be removed if you click elsewhere
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[Edit]
With 24.8, to see all objects on a layer, hover on the layer tab and they will be briefly shown with black fill, see ReleaseNotes/24.8 - The Document Foundation Wiki

[Hrbrgr]

@bod

In Draw, how do I make a border or line around a text box?
How do I fill a text box?

In addition to the manuals, LibreOffice also has the TDF Wiki - and here on the topic:

Text Boxes in Draw

[ajlittoz]

A few comments for your enlightenment:

• Draw manipulates a single category of object: shapes
• shapes have a shape (line or curve, ellipse, rectangle or more generally polygons, …)
• shapes have optional “decoration” properties: a border, a background and a "label’ (text attached to the “shape”)

A text box is simply a particular instance of a rectangular shape with no border, no background and a forced label.

You can customise your text box like any other shape. You select it (usually clicking on the text itself) and select a specific command in the Format menu or you right-click on it from the start and choose a command from the contextual menu.

The commands which might interest you are:

• Text Attributes for anything related to text: font face, size, weigtht, colour, …
• Line for the border (yes, it is not obvious this relates to the border – here you must read line as the frontier between shape inside and outside)
• Area to paint the inside of the shape (background)

There is no way in the default configuration to see border of all text boxes. You can do it in advanced usage of Draw with styles. A style is a named collection of properties you can apply to a shape. The style then tags the shapes. By temporarily modifying the style, borders are added. All shapes to which this style has been applied will instantly display their borders. Reverting your change, borders are erased.

Using styles in Draw is quite difficult (the concept is not well-polished enough) and somehow not “natural” because this approach is rarely met in drawing applications.

[Regina]

@ajlittoz

Text Attributes for anything related to text: font face, size, weigtht, colour, …

The item “Text Attributes” opens the dialog “Text”. That dialog has nothing about the font. Font related settings are accessed with item “Character…”.

[ajlittoz]

@Regina Thanks for the clarification.

[Regina]

@ajlittoz

Using styles in Draw is quite difficult (the concept is not well-polished enough) and somehow not “natural” because this approach is rarely met in drawing applications.

I disagree here. Styles in Draw are easy to use. You only need to know, that a style in Draw is related to the entire shape. There exist no paragraph or text styles for to apply to a part of a text. That is different from the “Frame” in Writer.

The style for a shape in Draw allows to specify font properties. Only they are used for the entire text. To format a part of the text you have to use direct formatting.

[bod]

Thank you.
I appreciate the detailed exposition and tips about right click etc.
There’s a bit of a learning curve as much as most of the features and modus operando are familiar.
(I presume some things are different for i.p. reasons.)
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I stuck with old school menus because as you say the ribbons can be handy but take up more space for what little they add, and when I want to find all functions and find support for them I’m presuming menus will help my learning.
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Great to know empty text boxes get removed - I hate not knowing what invisible detritus is floating about.
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And the community convo warms my heart - it’s the original collaborative FOSS attitude that I’ve long admired and seen as a beacon of hope in contrast to the monopolising norm most people presume they should adopt.
Hence wanting to honour that with feedback that we do need to compete with the mainstream - just in simple terms they do so well at: making things look appealing and easy to get on and use.
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Given the difference in intention, community, access to capability and lack of conflicting interests/ agenda which compromise and stifle mainstream creativity, collaborative egalitarian models can win the sentiment for most people - or at least most people who give such things the slightest thought - even more so as already I am finding features that I’m surprised by and impressed with - as well as few I am sorry see missing or faulty.
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It does seem most people really are hell bent on following the herd along very sub-optimal lines at the expense of so much instead of choosing any of the equally available and far superior options (apps, programs, places to live, means of communication, food, acquaintances, sources of information, daily practises, means of recreation).

[bod]

ok now I’m just trying to see how to


keep line breaks
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in the text
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so it doesn’t all appear as 1 block

It disn’t do that to my original post - there are gaps between paragraphs and I didn’t have to trick it or it to do that.

[ajlittoz]

@bod

keep line breaks

The site engine is HTML-based. It has adopted MarkDown for formatting shortcuts but it remains HTML in the background. Consequently, you can use HTML tags (except for a very low number of them which are filtered out to avoid problems).

The basic HTML rule for “whitespace” (spaces, tabs, linebreaks) is to merge any consecutive sequence into a single occurrence. This explains why multiple linebreaks are reduced to a single one and additional spacing between paragraphs disappears (what I don’t understand is why this is not the case in question and answers and it applies only to comments).

To create spacing between paragraphs, I prefix them with <br>, the HTML tag for a true explicit linebreak.

Others have chosen to insert paragraphs reduced to a period (like in your preceding comment). But I find it clumsy because it shows the dot in the formatted result. Note that any character will do. I have not tried “non-breaking space” (which you encode as   if you can’t type it from your keayboard), not sure if it is considered “whitespace” by the browsers.