Importing sections in Writer

[pivaz]

Purpose: Linking small files into a Writer document, inserting them as Sections. On the update of a text (a single file linked to one/several documents), the content is automatically update in all documents containing it.
The behavior of sections into the document is strange, as follow:

1. Insert > Section > Link > Write protection: NO

   The text appears on the next page

2. I move the section in the previous page

3. Tools > Upadte > Update all

   The section returns on the next page

I guess this is an issue related to the original text or the section itself, but I don’t know why. Maybe the text acquires a strange properties when inserted onto the target document as a section.

(edited by ajlittoz for better readability)
Test document with sections.odt
Informazioni generali - Assistenza post-vendita - IT.odt

[ajlittoz]

Look at the inserted document. Is there a page break before the first paragraph? If the page break is coded in the paragraph style Text Flow tab (to force a specific page style), this page break dos not occur if the paragraph is the first in the document. This is no longer the case if the paragraph is inserted as a section after some text.

If you can’t sort out the issue, attach a sample linking document and a single (small) inserted file still exhibiting the problem. To attach files, edit your question (don’t use an answer which is supposed to provide the solution) and use the paperclip tool.

[ajlittoz]

The provided main sample document has the following structure:

• a cover page with style Default Style
• a manual page break to switch to page style CorpoDocumento
• a page CorpoDocumento with a section and a linked document for chapter 1.1
• a manual break to switch to page style CopertinaManuale
• a page CopertinoManuale with a section and a linked document for chapter 1.1.1

Due to the presence of manual page breaks, it is absolutely normal that the inserted sections start at top of pages. If I delete the page breaks, sections follows one another without spacing between them.

Tip: to display on-screen the formatting instructions, enable View>Formatting Marks. Added page breaks (i.e. those that are not the result of text flow) appear as blue dotted lines between pages.

To fix your problem, study the defined page styles and their intended use. For example, it looks to me that CopertinaManuale or Copertina should be used for the cover page instead of Default Style. Similarly, CorpoDocumento is probably intended for content pages and UltimaPagina for the back cover.

It is up to you. Contact the original style designer. He/She might give you good advices.

Also, I think that you can avoid using sections (which complicates document structure and may create stability issues – I experienced some and hit strange update behaviour) by setting a master document and referencing your clause documents. Sections are useful mainly when the section has a different number of columns than the surrounding text. Here, you can include the file directly without embedding it in a section. But master/slave documents is a neat feature to maintain a clean relationship between various documents whereas Insert>File copies content (except when the link option is checked but you may forget to do it).

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[pivaz]

Thank you for your reply.
I’m the style designer. I need some page styles to manage the appereance of the document in the better way according to the content. If I put only a text chunck in a page, the document looks strange, with a lot of white room along the pages and the page count increases too much.

I have <5 points and can’t vote, sorry.

[ajlittoz]

If you are accustomed to Word, take note of a very important difference in page management. Word margins define the space devoted to text; header and footer are set inside the margins. Writer margins are absolutely no-print areas; header and footer are taken from the printing area, effectively decreasing the available space for text.

If you defined your margin according to Word philosophy, this could result in too wide blank areas (“margins”) at top and bottom instead of what you planned.