A wee red, right-pointing arrow has appeared on the right hand side of the page of text I am typing. It prevents me from further typing. I Googled a solution to this problem and was told to go to “File-Options-Display and clear all check boxes under ‘Always show these formatting marks on the screen’.”
But when I go to ‘File’ on my laptop, there is no ‘Options’ option! Or 'Display, for that matter.
Help!
Seán.
@seannachai
Be so kind an share a shortend file which includes the problem.
If this is not possible so upload somewhere in the cloud and share the link for downloading.
You have typed too much spaces in some paragraphs, see selected line. Also in the last line you did that. So Writer is a little disturbed… Delete the superfluous spaces. - see screenshot -
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The little red arrow appears when you stuff too much contents in a fixed-size container. This is just a warning you overflow and the red arrow disappears when you remove the excess.
But, in your case, I don’t understand how you end up in this situation. There are no containers like frames or table cells in your document. However, adding text to your sample does not spill over to next page. You have a single page. How did you lock text flow?
Similarly, you have a huge blank footer which declares itself “header” which then should be at top of page, not bottom. It contains nothing and despite that, it has some fixed size. Default Page Style effectively reports a header and no footer.
There are other issues with your sample.
Since your goal is to write a novel which is probably more than 5 pages long, I highly recommend your learn styles. Read the Writer Guide for an introduction and make a pause in your writing to practice a bit styling. Your productivity will be boosted afterwards.
For more help, give us an idea about the editing history of your document. Something is broken and I can’t guess what as this is the first time I meet such a problem (no page spill over, header in wrong location). Also mention OS name (probably MacOS if you see no Tools>Options - note Tools, not File) and LO version.
All your text is in the header. Cut the body of the text and paste it below the blue dotted line labelled Header (Default Page Style) so it is in the main body of the page.
Also:
Cheers, Al
Elementary Dr. @EarnestAl Watson! I should have seen it. Backthinking about it, it is obvious. Congratulations!
Hi Al
Many thanks for your attempts to help me. My problem is I do not speak Digitali, so I actually don’t know what you’re talking about most of the time! I speak four European languages but am near illiterate in Digitali. I am not trying to be funny here, but there are a lot of words and phrases you use which are incomprehensible to me. It is vital that I get this issue cleared up as it has happened before, and I am plainly making some elementary mistake(s.) It is vital because I am a writer, and I lost the whole of this morning trying to get rid of that bloody red arrow in my latest novel!
Please bear with me, and I will come back to you tomorrow morning when my mind is clear, and I can deal with your suggestions efficiently. At the moment, it has exhausted me…
Best wishes,
Seán.
Then take a break to read the Writer Guide to acquire basic notions about Writer. This break will be beneficial because you’ll get some ideas about efficient use of modern office text processing programs. You’ll then understand how a document is structured: a continuous flow of text paragraphs which is split into pages (pages have various dedicated areas for different data: header, footer, text and notes).
After reading the guide, you should write your novel much faster because you’ll avoid common pitfalls and won’t be disturbed by formatting issues.
Thanks, Pal! I will do that in the morning…
Seán.
Here is step-by-step but modified to add an extra step from my solution:
I took the liberty to fix and make some basic changes. Any time you need a new chapter press Ctrl+1 or double click Heading 1 in the Styles pane of the Sidebar.
ChapterN99369EA.odt (31.0 KB)
Good morning!
First question: when pressing Ctrl+X (and V) as you suggest, does it matter if it is upper or lower case?
Seán.
Don’t press Shift because this changes the meaning of the shortcut. Usually, keyboard shortcuts are given as an uppercase letter like X because this is how keys are engraved.
This is a bit confusing for newbies. Strictly speaking, documentation should write x but this is different from what you see on your keyboard. The issue is made even more complex with the various keyboard layout available over the world where access to some letters may require Shift.
Thanks for the clarification. Nearly there! Please look at the attachment, and tell me how to get rid of the chapter heading on every page.
I have ordered the Writer’s Guide. I was unaware of its existence. Some time ago, I took my laptop to a local PC Doctor as it had been infected with a virus, and he installed Libre Office without telling me anything about it. Hence all the errors.
Best,
Seán.
ChapterN99369EA (2).odt (24.1 KB)
Simply click in the header and erase it.
You have a misuse in your document: you must be aware that the header is repeated on every page. Consequently, any single-occurrence mention must go inside the text area.
Since chapter heading is single-occurrence data, I move it in the text and styled the paragraph Heading 1. But you made a wrong assumption in your custom configuration: in Text Flow you requested a page break for First Page page style. This page style has probably a bad name because it is intended for the very first page of the document (its cover page), not the first page of every chapter. So, I corrected it for Default Page Style.
I assume you want the chapter heading repeating at top of every page except the first chapter page. I inserted a field in the header to automatically copy the chapter heading. I have not adjusted the properties of Default Page Style Header tab to request a different header for the first page. I let you discover this feature.
ChapterN99369EA (ajl).odt (22.2 KB)
Thanks again. But I do not want the chapter heading to appear at the top of every page, simply on the first page of every new chapter. But I should be able to deal with this myself now. Many thanks for your patience! The Writer’s Guide will be my Christmas reading…
Best,
Seán.
Then the is the “reverse” of my proposal.
Go to the Header tab of the page style.
Untick Same contents on first page
You can now enter a header for the first page and no header for the other pages.
However a word of caution. Doing so, you’ll need on specific page style per chapter. If your novel counts 50 chapters, this is not user-friendly. The workaround is to use fields in the first page header to copy the chapter title from the text. But, then, the chapter heading appears twice: once in the header and once in the Heading 1 paragraph at start of chapter.
IMHO, the simplest solution is no header on the first chapter page too and to customize Heading 1 paragraph style to achieve the layout and formatting of your choice. The whole continuous line below the chapter title is the bottom border of the paragraph. Its distance from text can be adjusted as the padding width (without need of an empty paragraph only for the sake of this bottom line).
Writer formatting is very versatile and powerful thanks to its concept of styles. Always opt for the simplest solution. A well-behaved text should contain absolutely no empty paragraph. Paragraphs convey the semantics of your discourse. Empty paragraphs provide no information. They are a semantic nonsense and consequently must be banned from your text. (In addition, note that empty paragraphs can really impede your formatting tuning necessitating manual action on text negating the benefits of styles).
You say:
Go to the Header tab of the page style.
Where do I find this tab? If I open my manuscript and go to “Styles” at the top of the page, there is no ‘Header’ tab.
On empty paragraphs: they may have no meaning in well-behaved texts in Digitalistan, but in creative writing, they have a lot of meaning. They convey a break in the action and/or time. What follows is a new event or action.
Best,
Seán.
This tab is part of the configuration dialog of page styles. Since page style modification occurs rather rarely in a document (at least manually because you can trigger them through text flow properties of paragraph styles), page styles are not shown in the various toolbars.
You must display the side style pane (F11 if not visible, then dock it – traditionally at right). By default this pane opens on the paragraph style list. At top of the pane, you have a small toolbar with 6 icons at left: paragraph, character, frame, page, list and “table” (but the latter category is not a real style). Click on the fourth icon from left to list page styles. Then, right-click on a name and Modify to access the configuration dialog.
