I am trying to create an ott template file that is the equivalent of an existing docx template. Opening any docx file and saving it as an odt or ott produces ‘converted’ headers and footers that cannot be replaced by proper LibreOffice headers and footers nor edited to use valid fonts in the converted ones.
Is there a trick to creating migrated templates with valid headers and footers? Or is this use case not supported?
In MS Word:
Page layout is inherited from previous page’s layout. To alter page elements (like headers and footers) you insert a page break, and in that break you can select to not inherit settings from previous page. If you edit page elements/layout, the edit will apply to the entire document part between two “inheritance breaks”.
In Writer:
Page layout is taken from named page style. Page style is applied according to the “next style” setting from the page style of previous page. You can manually apply a named page style when inserting a page break. If you edit page elements/layout, the edit will apply to all pages using the same named page style.
The page setup strategies are widely different in the two applications. While a conversion can make an identically-looking Word document from a heavily page-styled Writer document, and vice versa, the behavior of such documents upon further editing is highly unpredictable.
Do not open/save-as to convert a document template. The purpose of document templates is to have a predictable behavior when editing your document. The conversion “approximates” the various document elements to optimally emulate the immediate appearance, often at the expense of structure/behavior.
Start with an empty document. Alter settings (margins, page size, etc), set up page styles, copy unformatted(!) content to the various page elements and format it all in place (preferably by the use of text/paragraph styles), to make everything “native” to your template.
So yes, there is a trick. The trick is “do the work once again, for the new platform”.
This is the general “optimal workflow”, as I see it. If you need more specific advice, you have to provide more specific information: