I am using Writer ver 7.1
I cannot select multiple images by holding Shift key, as suggested by documentation. Ctrl or Ctr-shift also do not work.
I searched online for solution, but found various “solutions”, e.g. ‘use Draw’, ‘not supported’,‘use Big Arrow’ etc. So I suspect it is not supported, but not sure.
Is it supported? If so, how it is done?
Thanks
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In Writer
You can select multiple drawing shapes, e.g. circle, rectangle, line by holding down Shift. You can apply effects to these. But only those effects that are common to all, so if selection includes a line for example then a fill cannot be applied although a new line colour can be applied.
Images (as in Insert > Image), e.g. png, jpg, cannot be multi-selected except by selecting the paragraphs they are anchored to. In this case they are not selected as images so image effects cannot be applied to them.
In Draw
You can select multiple images and apply effects
Just as I suspected, it is not supported.
This is a common operation in MS Word. I typically select multiple images and then use ‘combine’ to make them into a single object which can be easily moved around and edited.
I don’t understand why this is not availble in LO. This deficiency is a strong deterrent for me to use LO.
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Writer is not intended as an image manipulation application. It emphasises organised layout of text. Images don’t exist per se but as frames which can then be managed as “exceptions” to the main flow.
If you want to combine several images as a single object, do it in Draw, the drawing application of the suite. Draw has all the tools you’d need and more. As a specialised graphical application, you have more adapted, versatile and powerful tools at your disposal. And most important, you control the disposition in more fine-grained precision.
In Writer an inserted image is by default hosted by a TextFrame of predefined style (Graphic) for puposes of anchoring, positíoning. sizing … As is true for any TextFrame objects you can’t select more than one of them at a time.
Not recommended as a standard way, but…
If you want to override the default behaviour, but also to bypass the usage of Draw you can insert a shape (will mostly be a rectangle) and make this shape hosting the image by assigning it to its Area as the “Bitmap” which doesn’t mean the type of its representation. Any common image type is accepted an will not be converted.
The shape can also be used to create a non-rectangular “frame”. They can be grouped …
An erxcample is attached.
exampleImagesDifferentlyHosted.odt (468.3 KB)
Once more: I would suggest bo use Draw for such manipulöations.
As per LO 7.0.4 (I know it’s very old but the only available one from Debian stable repos to the moment) you can select multiple drawing objects like this:
View → Toolbars → Drawing
on appeared on the bottom toolbar use the most left arrow icon - it’s selection.
Draw dashed rectangle around your objects (avoiding text boxes) - bingo.
Really strange for me why this way it’s (it means - technically) possible, but with usual-expected by all of us Ctrl+click - not…
Shift+click (stated in Help) doesn’t work either.