Insert > More Breaks > Manual Break
Choose Type: Page break
Style: Landscape
Then do the same again, but choose Style: Default
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This should be the accepted answer for OP’s question. I can’t upvote yet unfortunately.
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This is the useful answer in this thread. This method works as described by Allegra above.
Trying to follow the other answers caused weird behavior in the document (e.g. made the odd pages portrait and even pages landscape).
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Then you probably are using the alternating set of page styles Right Page and Left Page. Playing with Format>Page Style modifies the current page style (where the cursor is located) and the modification is active on all pages formatted with this page style.
This is not “weird” behaviour but standard intended one. Read the Writer Guide for an explanation about page styles, keeping in mind that Format>Page Style results in a customization of the current page style, not in a one-shot local formatting action.
It’s up to the OP to decide what his or her accepted answer is.
When I followed those instructions to the letter, it gave me a blank landscape page. If you want existing text to be formatted as landscape, move the cursor to the end of the landscape page and insert the manual break there.
wrt user interface design “weird” = behavior not anticipated by users without specific knowledge of the interface.
The fundamental idea of GUIs is to volunteer information to the user, so that they can easily discover how to use the program, without first studying the manual. Blaming users for not being able to understand the interface is the antithesis of GUI design.
I have been a routine user of LibreOffice for as long as it has existed. This used to be an exemplary implementation of a WYSIWG word processor. This is the principle use case for most of the users. It seems that goal has been demoted in the development priorities. That is something which really matters.
It depends on the balance between GUI and feature complexity. From the very beginning, Writer is style-oriented.
Style definition can be fully completed in GUI. This is where you discover the name of the features (but from personal experience it is sometimes very difficult to guess the effect of such and such sub-feature).
BUT, formatting is not GUI-driven. If you try to GUI-format (or equivalently to direct-format), you’ll quickly bump into limitations or conflicts like the one you described.
Sorry to insist upon it, GUI-formatting is an easy way to get a taste about what can be done with Writer but to gain full control on its possibilities, there is no other way than to read some documentation, at least to grasp the founding principles. Writer is WYSIWIG, but get back to the acronym meaning: what you see on screen is what you’ll get on paper, full stop. WYSIWIG never meant it was easy to create the formatting in order to implement your goal.
With Writer, you can design very very complex documents. And this can’t be achieved simply with direct-formatting. You must proceed with styles. And, yes, styling can be done with GUI controls. In other words, you change your GUI control from elementary direct formatting to a more elaborate scheme.
What percentage of LO Writer users choose it for the ability to create “very very complex documents”?
There is a repeated folly in both open and closed source word processors of breaking a popular working system, because the developers are bored. The priority of >95% of users of LO Writer is ease of use.
Word processing is not publishing. When I write books and other very complex documents I use Latex, where I can have explicit control and arbitrarily complex packages. If I used closed source I would use Adobe.
If you can design a system to serve a wide segment of users extending into publishing, all credit to you, but please remember that the overwhelming number of users are writing documents of one to a few dozen pages most of the time.
Have you experienced the styles system? For everyday docs (letters, notes, …), writing such simple documents is a treat with styles. It is even faster than direct-formatting.
I am no developer. I’ve chosen LO Writer precisely for its ease of use. The templates provide another layer of ease of use: pre-formatted documents customised for your own usage. This requires some preparation ahead of it, but the “return over investment” is worth it.
Regarding the trade-off between direct formatting vs. styling, I consider the cut-off point to be at 2 pages for one-shot documents and 1 page (yes!) for maintained documents, i.e. documents you’d edit and revise several times.
And like most users, most of my documents are ~5 pages long.
Sorry, but that’s absolute nonsense. A GUI is a graphical user interface, as opposed to a textual user interface, like in MS DOS. It offers a kind of sorted listing of all commands (that’s what they were called at first) that the software has to offer. In simple programs, that overview will look intuitive, but programs with really many functions will get a clotted UI, and the user will have to learn to work with it.
At first I was as stumped by how to insert a “manual break” as you are about inserting a single landscape page, then when I found that thing in the Insert menu, and noted that you have to select a page style in the window that you get when you invoke that command, it was easy. I much prefer the page style concept to the sections in older versions of MS Word (Word 2003 was the last I owned).
I will not engage further. If anyone is interested in user interface design its history and theory, there are may websites and textbooks that cover it. The relevant keywords to search on are “usability” and “discoverability”.
Awesome, thank you
This is not an answer but rather an add-on to the question. I followed the instructions to create a landscape page as the second page and it worked. However, when I copied another LO Writer landscape page and pasted it into the second page, the page orientation returned to portrait. I then could not change the page style back to landscape without closing the document and opening it again. Next, I used Paste Special LibreOffice 6.3 Text Document. The page returned to portrait orientation. Closed and opened the document again. Then tried Paste Special Rich text formatting (RTF) and that kept the page orientation as landscape.
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This is not an answer but rather an add-on to the question.
You are right. Therefore your post should be added to the question or to a specifically related answer as a comment.
The post also is not a question, but is (basically) about a supposed bug. If you actually can describe a reproducible misbehavior of LibO, you should report it to https://bugs.documentfoundation.org . I’m afraid you won’t find much attention for it via this Q&A site, and surely there will not be a fix. You may hope for a workaround at best.
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You can’t copy’n’paste pages in Writer. You copy text (formatted or not). Unless, you better describe, step by step, what you did, we can’t comment or have an opinion about the misbehaviour.
I copied the text on the page using Shift Ctrl End and then Ctrl C
Did the selection range contain “special” formatting “tags”? (you can see them when View>Formatting Marks is enabled).
Can you attach a sample file with the problem to your “answer”? You can’t attach to a comment, so edit your “answer”. If you deem a full discussion/analysis is needed, ask your own question (quoting this one in a link) and delete your “answer”.
What I have been doing it switching back and forth between LibreOffice (LO), where this process is obnoxious and Text Maker Free Office ™, where it is easy, when I want to change page orientation of particular pages.
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/download/applications
Text Maker is better at page orientation, is less buggy, and more responsive to reported bugs by users. TM has not figure out tables of contents yet.
LibreOffice has more functionality, is far more buggy and awkward, non responsive to reported bugs by users (this one is an example), and does nice tables of contents.
I will save in LO and go into TM to set my desired page orientation, then back into LO to update my Tables of Contents.
Neither one does envelopes worth a dang. I use “Envelope Printer” for them.
http://www.datawaregames.com/html/Envelope-Printer.htm
Envelope Printer is insanely easy to use.
I had a look at Text Maker Free Office on-line manual.
The main difference with LO Writer is in styles: TM Free Office only offers paragraph and character styles. There are no frame, list and page styles. A seemingly equivalent feature to page styles is master pages, but this does not cover all functionalities of page styles. So, I assume it translates to direct-formatting when document is exported to .odt.
Also, master pages seem to be less flexible than page styles. A switch requires a manual “chapter break” (whereas there are far more ways to switch in LO Writer).
What I fear most with your workflow (back and forth between TMFO and LO W) is the progressive clutter of the document by direct formatting which will prevent you from easily controlling the document with styles.
TMFO seems to be less “advanced” (style-wise) than Writer and less prone to formatting/layout automation.
With now a long experience with LO Writer styles, I don’t find the page control process to be obnoxious in both simple and complex documents. You seem to be in the stage where you know what to request from documents apps to reach your formatting goal but not having yet mastered the next step where you drop direct formatting for styles assignment to elements of text. This next level brings you many more effects and more comfort in writing.
Read the Writer Guide for an introduction to styles.