How to change background colour on different pages in Libre Office Writer document?

My question is a derivative of this question:

The last answer FORMAT->Page_>Area->Color works, but it changes the color of every page in the document.

In my case, I need different pages in the same document to have different background colors…

The way I am currently changing pages is to open a new doc, type some text, INSERT → Page Break… but, like I said, when I change the background using FORMAT → Page → Area → Color… it then changes all the pages in the entire document, whereas I need the first page with a blue background and the second with a green one…

Any help much appreciated!

Hello,

if you need different pages with different colors, you need different Page Styles with different settings for the Area color (Format -> Page -> Area -> Color changes the background color for the default page style and you seem to not use customized page styles).

You need to create

  • a page style with blue background (e.g. PageBlue)
  • a page style with green background (e.g. PageGreen)
  • Assure that setting Next style matches the actual style name (in tab Organizer, when creating the page style)
  • Insert a manual page break through Insert -> More Breaks ...-> Manual Break an selecting the desired page style for the next page, if you want to switch from one background color to the second one.

Ref.: LibreOffice Help - Creating and Applying Page Styles

See the following sample file: PageBlueGreen.odt

Hope that helps.

This question has already been addressed numerous times!

Think of the structure of your document. A different page background means a different logical part. This is reflected by using a different page style.

For basic information about styles, read the relevant chapters in the Writer Guide.

Once you have the page style(s) for your various book parts, you have to assign the required page style to these parts.

CAUTION! You don’t assign a page style to a page (because pages don’t exist per se; they are only the consequence of text flow). You tell Writer how to lay out text when it needs a new page. The new page is defined by the page style (margins, columns, background, …).

When you are at the boundary between your parts, you insert a “special” page break. The usual Ctrl+Enter or Insert>Page Break is not sufficient because it only request a page break without changing page properties.

Instead, use Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break. In the dialog, you can choose which page style will format the pages after the break. You can also reset the page number if desired.

A page style is effective between two “boundaries”. A boundary is start of document, special page break or end of document. All pages between boundaries are formatted the same.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

In case you need clarification, edit your question (not an answer which is reserved for solutions) or comment the relevant answer.

Concerning the post by the original questioner (@wm777 ) of which the qualification as an answer was doubted, I offer a special kind of comment by attaching the following example. It may shine a light on an additional point of “limping complexity” coming with page styles as they are.
No page styles at all are worse, however.
funnyPageColoring.odt
(Once I sketched a project under the working titel “Pages About Pges” where I wanted to make everything clear to myself, and also to include and discuss related user code. It proceeded slowly, and is now suspended.)

That did the trick. Thank you!

What I needed was…

View → Styles → Highlight Default Page Style → RMB Click “Add New Style”

But wouldnt have gotten there so easy without your help.

Ty again!


ADDING

Okay, I got it. Yes, it is answered.

The manual break feature worked completely.

As for other times this question has been asked, I looked, but I couldn’t find it, so I at least tried. I respect the notion that you probably want to avoid redundancy in the forums, but fwiw what popped up in Google as most relevant was what I referenced initially. Thank you again for your help. Libre Office Wrter is awesome. :slight_smile:

Wondering if this qualifies as an “answer” (it brings information not contained in other answers) or simply as a feedback comment. In which case it should be reposted as a comment and this “non-answer” deleted.