I am using LO 7.2 and had used a template for a book offered by LO.
I am on a PC with Windows 10,
the document I am trying to work on has been saved as a .docx file.
If I have used the preface style for my forward pages, title, copyright, dedication, and so forth., shouldn’t my first page be the 1st chapter heading?
If not why not and how can I fix it.
I have an automatic TOC and it says my chapter 1 begins on page 8.
@ajlittoz , done.
EDIT @Hrbrgr, text formatted.
Please edit your question (press the … icon then the pencil tool) to better describe the structure of your book and what you what too achieve with full details. Don’t forget to mention LO version and OS name.
That really depends on you and on how or where you intend to publish it.
In printed books, page numbering normally includes all physical pages at the start of the book. If you use Roman numerals for the first pages, the counting should still start from the title page.
I have already published the paperback and the Kindle versions, this is for the hardback version, It is published on amazon. I understand about the roman numerals and all I just need someone to tell me HOW to do it because everything I have tried using logic has not worked,
See my post tagged as solution in How do I change the page style of a header? - #5 by mhklein57 for how to restart page numbering. The style of page numbering (Roman, Arabic), is controlled by page styles, so you will need at least two different page styles.
It looks like you want an elaborate numbering scheme: unnumbered front cover, Roman numbered TOC, chapters numbered from one. This requires the use of several page styles because page numbers are a property of page styles. Do you know how to use page styles?
I also warn you that having saved your document as .docx has already created havoc in its formatting, because this implies a conversion when opening it and another conversion when saving it, with disastrous cumulative effects behind the scene. If .docx is a requirement of the publishing shop, it is wise (and highly recommended) to work with .odt and only converting to .docx (without any further editing work on it) to send a copy to the recipient. Due to the differences between the two formats, it is presently too late to make a “clean” file with what you expect (every single page has likely received its own page style instead of one per logical part). .docx has no notion of page style and uses a different concept for the feature.
thank you @anon87010807 and @ajlittoz this has been very helpful let me go so if I can apply what you have given me here thanks again I think I know how to fix the problem now
When you imported your docx file, check the page style of your preface. On the “Organizer” tab of the style properties, the “Next style” setting determines what next page style automatically should be applied.
An alternative mechanism is to impose a different page style through paragraph formatting. For example, on the “Text flow” tab of paragraph properties, you can automatically insert a page break before that automatically changes to a specific page style. Thus, a 1st chapter heading can be set to automatically cause the paragraph to start on a style for the first page of a chapter.
It is possible that such settings are not correctly preserved when exporting to docx. If you extensively use specific features of Writer, then save your document in the native format of LibreOffice. The way Microsoft Word and LibreOffice implement features at some times is fundamentally different, and cannot always be translated with 100% reliability. Thus, features that work when you retrieve a document saved in odt may be broken when you saved the document to docx.