I’m a writer, and a basic function of a word processing program is to suppress the header on the opening pages of a chapter. How is this done in LibreOffice? I’ve been over everything, and the way remains a mystery. In Word, you click on the text, then back on the header, and a dialogue box pops up. LibreOffice apparently doesn’t work that way. Thank you.
No application behaves the same as any other. You should always read the manual when you start using a new one.
In LO, headers and footers are a property of page styles. A page style defines the general layout of the page. Therefore, you generally have one for the cover page, one for general information about the book after the cover, one for the TOC, one for the chapters, one for the index, one for the back cover, …
A page style owns the header and consequently what is put inside like a title or page number. Whenever you need a different header/footer, you create a different page style.
However, for simple cases, there are shortcuts. In your case, I guess you only use a single page style, namely Default Style. You can have a look at its properties with the side style pane (F11 to make it visible) and click on the fourth icon from the left in the toolbar (icon looking like a small page) to display the list of page styles. The highlighted one is the presently active at the cursor position.
Right-click on its name and Modify. Open the Header or Footer tab. There you can check or uncheck Same content on … to achieve what you want.
Note that to reset the “first page” status at start of every chapter, you must insert a page break with Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break to be able to specify the page style after the page break (and thus reset the state).
There is much more with the styles, allowing for full automation. So read the aforementioned manual.
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The above answer is not really helpful. The truth is that Libre Office is not good on this issue. The problem is: Libre Office will not recognize the first page of the next chapter as a first page if both the current chapter and the next chapter have the same page style even if you insert a manual page break between the 2 chapters. Here is a work around that is ridiculous, but it does get the job done: Create two page styles for the chapters of the book, exactly the same but with different names, say chapodd and chapeven. Use them alterenatively for the chapters of the book. Here is how you do this: Put Chapter 1 in page style chapodd, and set the headers as you need them, leave header blank for first page and set headers for next two pages. At end of Chapter 1 switch to page style chapeven. Do this as follows: use insert-more breaks-manual-page break-choose style: chapeven. Then set the headers for this chapter. Now the header are set for both chapodd and chapeven page styles. Keep alternating between the two page styles for the chapters, each time switching through the insert page break command, choosing the style alternately between chapodd and chapeven. The headers will fall into place, with the header of each first page blank.
That’s total nonsense.
Use First page for the first page of a chapter, linking it to the Heading 1 paragraph style, and Default or whatever style you use for the average page and it will work.
But anyway, the OP hasn’t been back for months, this exchange isn’t going to help him or her.
re floris v comment:
What specifically do you mean by “linking” the page style “First Page” to the Heading 1 paragraph style. and a page style.
Also I would point out that the question has been asked several times over recent years without a satisfactory solution being given. So your answer might help a bunch of writers.
@jojeb: I didn’t mean that personally, mind you.
See this tutorial: [Tutorial] Page styles and headers/footers (View topic) • Apache OpenOffice Community Forum, method 2 in the second post (or first “reply”).
The “different behavior for first page” in a page style was added in LibreOffice to make life easier for people who have a document with a first page without header/footer and headers and footers on the rest. You noticed correctly that you need two different page styles in all all other cases. That question has been flogged to death in the Apache OpenOffice forum on this subject, that’s why I wrote that tutorial. Google for “page styles headers openoffice” and you may find it on the first page with search results. I don’t add this to advertise myself, but hey, it’s not impossible to find.
Thanks, the tutorial is useful.