Start page numbers from a specific page for a book

English
#1

I have finished writing a book and am typesetting it in LO Writer 24.2. I am viewing this book in the “book view” (using the icon on the right of the very bottom tool bar). The first 16 pages of the book are the accolades, mature rating, title page, legal material, dedication, foreward, etc … and I do not wish for these pages to have page numbers. I wish to begin my page numbering on the 17th page of the book. I have spent hours (literally) try to set up simple page numbering that begins on the 17th page (so that page 17 is numbered page 1) with no success. I also want these pages to be mirrored so that for left hand pages, the numbers appear in the far upper left of the page, and for right hand pages, they appear on the far upper right of the page, … but, … they page numbers must appear within my 6 inch by 9 inch margins (which in the book world is called “trim size”). I have tried forty different techniques and read several forum posts and still have had no success. I did try to make the first 16 pages as a separate page style but that does not seem to work for me. I tried setting up a section break but that does not seem to work either. I tried to follow the instructions in this post:

But those instructions are not working for me in LO Writer 24.2. My entire book document seems to be set up in “default paragraph style” and any attempt to change that or separate the first 16 pages from the main body of the book fails. To be honest, I am totally confused. I did try to read through the LO Writer 24.2 official instruction manual but it is confusing, has 497 pages! and after trying some of the steps, they don’t work for me. What I really need is some step by step instructions for a kindergarten student. (And I do mean step by step.) Please assume i know nothing about page styles, page breaks, and section breaks. I never, … ever, … ever, … thought starting simple page numbering on a document from page 17 would be SO difficult.

#2

You probably want a front cover, unnumbered, then your copyright page, dedication page, etc, see Book design - Wikipedia . To simplify I will just use one separate style for demonstration

  1. Create a new page style using the Styles pane in the Sidebar by right clicking Default Page Style and selecting New
    1. In the Organiser tab give it a name, e.g. FrontMaterial. Set next style to FrontMaterial
    2. In the Page tab, set Page Numbers to Roman, your choice of upper or lower case
    3. In Footer tab tick Footer on and OK
  2. Click at the end of the front material and click Insert > More breaks > Manual Break
  3. In the dialogue select
    1. Page break
    2. In Page Style select Default Page Style
    3. Tick the box Change page number, it will show 1 as the starting number so let it stand. OK
  4. You have now split the document in two. Click in the front part and then double click the new page style that you made, FrontMaterial.
  5. Click in the footer of one of the FrontMaterial pages and click Insert > Page Number, OK

You should have Roman numbering in the first part and Arabic numbering, starting from 1, in the second part.

Try this sample document, create the new page style, then split it just before the heading “Content”
PracticePageStyles104044EA.odt (47.4 KB)

2 Likes
Master document page numbering//start page numbering on a page other than page 1
Writing a book, page numbering
#3

Go to:

Chapters:

12 Default Page Formatting
13 Title Page
14 Papers Without a Title Page
15 Pages with and without numbers

HTH

1 Like
#9

The first answer by EarnestAI produces two different numbers exactly as provided in the instructions. Sadly, I do not want any numbering in my front material. I define front material following the instructions above but I can’t seem to remove headers from only the front material. Anytime I try to add headers or remove them, it seems to apply to the whole document and not just to the Front Material. So, what I want is two sections:

Front Material = No headers or footers, no numbering
Body Material = Headers, no footers, numbering starting with page one (page 1 is actually page 17)

The other stuff is not that helpful and with no disrespect intended, I don’t wish to order a book from the UK when I live in California.

Might I make a suggestion to the powers that be at the Document Foundation - Libre Office Writer section: The method described above is WAY too long and convoluted to simply start page numbering at a particular spot. Anyone should be able to go to whatever page they want, … say page 133, … right click which brings up a menu with one of the choices being Start Page Numbering from here. If you click that option, you then have further options to mirror page numbering and choose Roman numerals, etc … This method would be SO much simpler.

1 Like
#14

A few general remarks. Please be sure that I don’t intend anything offensive. I just am not a native speaker of any English.

  1. A forum site or a Q&A tool like the one here shouldn’t be expected to teach everybody private lessons in taylor-made style following exactly the very special approach a newcomer thought (wrongly?) to be appropriate for himself.
  2. Typesetting software for a wide range of use-cases can’t avoid any and all complications because user’s needs and expectations can be very different. Every additional feature needs additional means to set related options e.g. And type setting is an old art.
  3. Therefore any new user needs to learn about the basics. Experienced users can point him mainly to written sources covering these basics. They may also offer a specialized example. Thats’s it.
  4. A few decades ago, a profit-oriented company invented an advertising slogan that became an acronym as “WYSIWYG”. This was a disaster for people who knew a typewriter but had no idea about typesetting. They were led to believe that would be enough.
  5. So if you believe in the capitalist paradigm, you should “buy” and use their software. If you want something better, you may have to learn a little more, but you get the software for free.

(Partly created with DeepL.com - free version.)
[If experienced contributors tell me this is too far “Off Topic”, I will delete the post.]

1 Like
#15

Read his instructions again. Just don’t do step 5 wich integrates the page number in the footer… (I didn’t try however - using my mobile today…)

#4

Can I recomend that you get a copy of Boring but Essential - A Handbook for Authors.
www.amazon.co.uk/Boring-but-Essential-Handbook-Authors/dp/B0CKB6NZ83/
This book explains how to start the numbering from the page starting Chapter 1.

#7

The first step is to logically divide your document into “parts”. Then each part can have its own page styles and consequently its own footer/header with or without page numbering.

“Parts” are delimited by boundaries. A boundary is created with Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break. A dialog pops up and allows you to choose the properties of the part beginning after the break:

  • page style to apply: it must have been previously created
  • starting page number if any

In your case, it is probably better to define various pages styles for the different component of your front material and use Default Page Style for the main topic.

You can request Default Page Style in your division step. This will apply the same page style to all parts but the boundary is nevertheless created.

Afterwards, you can change the page style in any part:

  1. put the cursor in a part
  2. double-click on the taget page style name in the style side pane
  3. check in the bottom status bar that the desired page style has been applied

After this, insert the various fields (page number, document title, chapter name, …) and fixed text in your header or footer.

#12

I would ajlittoz but I have never seen a forum like this one. EVERY FORUM has simple reply and edit buttons but this one. This whole forum is like designed by some weird developer that has never seen a regular forum before. In short, your method is not working for me in LO Writer 24.2. When I go to Insert->More Breaks-> Manual->page style and try to select a page style I already defined, it is not listed. All I can choose is default paragraph. I have spent about 14 hours over 3 days trying to simply add page numbers starting from page 17. To me, this is a very, very simple request that any author would need. I have never seen a program this convoluted before, … EVER! I mean no offense but I need EXACT, line by line instructions for a baby. Assume I know nothing (which is close to the truth).

#13

This site is not a forum. It is a Question & Answers one. There is no “thread”. You ask a question and you get answer(s). A question may be imprecise and additional details may be needed to understand it. These additions are requested by comments under the question and, in principle, OP should provide them by editing the question so that all data is in a single location, avoiding the need to scroll across a “discussion” to understand.

Here, all contributions can be modified any time (except for newcomers who are restricted to a rather short deadline until they have enough “privileges”, i.e. roughly enough visits).

Similarly, answers may be obscure or slightly off-topic. Again, precisions can be requested by comments under the relevant “answer”.

Finally, the site engine, called Discourse (not developed by TDF), can reorder the “answers” according to its own relevance rules, thus breaking the chronological ordering and making things obscure if you rely on this order.

If you really mean Default Paragraph Style, then this is not the right dialog. You should read Default Page Style.

Indeed. But you must understand the Writer abstract model.
Regarding pages, it is based on user-positioned “boundaries” as I told. Once you have these “boundaries”, the sequence of pages between them can be styled any way you like.

What I don’t understand is why your custom styles are not in the drop-down menu. For technical analysis, attach your file.

#16

Okay, there is an older plugin to add a start page number on a specific page, however that plugin or add on no longer works. I tried to contact the developer and to no avail. Any chance something simple like this can be added to the actual builds. I author novels for example and want the first chapter page about three pages in to start at page 1 with no numbers for the title or index page. My actual Chapter one page starts at page 2 however. I am not a developer and appreciate all your folks hard work since MS abandoned most folks on modest incomes with a very expensive subscription. But starting a certain on a certain number is critical. We shouldn’t need to go through styles when an add-on is available and probably with some reworking would work, or better yet to incorporate something simple and exact as this in the builds. This is a simple thing being ignored for other features and yet my search indicates that we always get back to creating styles when a simple pull down menu offering starting page numbering would suffice.

Here is that add-on link, again doesn’t work with newest versions. Can you guys just incorporate something like this into the next build? Thanks for your help.

Page Number Add-on for Writer

#17

No. We are users like you, see How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Wiki

Page numbers are set in page style.
Did you try going through my instructions as a tutorial? Where did you get stuck? Maybe I can improve the detail?
It should take only a minute to create a new page style and set it to start numbering from page 1.

#18

The problem in my case is a title page and index page already exist. So do a number of chapters in my work. I am not sure how to move those chapters to a new setup. But my point here is simply this. A plugin or ad-on exists to simplify this process with a pull down menu, which I had provided the link. It was released 9 months ago and when I tried to use it to number pages I got a python error such as this.

A Scripting Framework error occurred while running the Python script vnd.sun.star.script:PageNumberingAddon.oxt|python|main.py$main?language=Python&location=user:uno_packages.

Message: <class ‘KeyError’>: ‘PageNumberingAddon.oxt’
File “C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\pythonscript.py”, line 1047, in getScript
storageUri = self.provCtx.getStorageUrlFromPersistentUrl(
File “C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\pythonscript.py”, line 418, in getStorageUrlFromPersistentUrl
package = self.mapPackageName2Path[ packageName ]

#19

A Scripting Framework error occurred while running the Python script vnd.sun.star.script:PageNumberingAddon.oxt|python|main.py$main?language=Python&location=user:uno_packages.

Message: <class ‘KeyError’>: ‘PageNumberingAddon.oxt’
File “C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\pythonscript.py”, line 1047, in getScript
storageUri = self.provCtx.getStorageUrlFromPersistentUrl(
File “C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\pythonscript.py”, line 418, in getStorageUrlFromPersistentUrl
package = self.mapPackageName2Path[ packageName ]

#20

Did you look at the Installation information at LibreOffice - OpenOffice extensions / lo-page-numbering · GitLab ?

#21

OK sombody created this, so he/she may Support IT or not. Don’t expect TDF to cover for everything somebody has written.

I can see this in the extension system, but the link to the sources show: No changes since 5 years.

Quiet interesting idea… So I can change the development of LibreOffice by creating an extension?? TDF ist then forced to incorporated it? I don’t think it works Like this.

#22

The interesting question is: how is this existing book already structured? The author (you?) already formatted the work. Was it done typewriter-fashion, i.e. everything is done manually without using styles? If this is the case, the situation is helpless because you’ll have to tag the text at least a minimum. The strict minimum is to make a distinction between the narrative, Body Text paragraph style, and chapter titles, Heading 1. It also includes the elimination of all empty paragraphs used for vertical spacing.

For the page numbering issue, you must create a “boundary” between the front material and the body. I see 3 parts in your book: the title page, the index (a TOC?) and the narrative. Considering built-ins, I suggest you create a custom page style for the index.

You style your title page with built-in First Page.

Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break at beginning of your index, requesting your custom page style.
Is your index automatically generated from the chapter titles?

Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break before the heading of the first chapter requesting both Default Page Style and page number reset to 1. Better: right-click on your chapter heading and Paragraph instead of adding the break separately. Go to Text Flow tab and add the page break Before with all desired properties.

As soon as your book is structured as described by the boundaries created by the special breaks, you can number or add header/footer to “parts” independently.

#23

OK, it is going to be easier to just number the pages than debugging whatever problem you have with the extension. Start with this simplistic sample
PageNumberingExistingDocument.odt (21.0 KB)

  1. In Sidebar > Styles > Page Styles select your existing page style, in this case Default Page Style.
  2. Click Styles action and select New style from selection
  3. In the dialogue that opens, give the new page style a unique relevant name, say Main Body. OK
  4. Click in the document on the page before you want the pages to restart numbering. In this case immediately after the TOC on page 3
  5. Click Insert > More breaks > Manual break
  6. In the new dialogue:
    1. Ensure that Page Break is selected
    2. Under Page Style select the page style Main Body
    3. Tick Change page number and make sure you have selected 1. OK
  7. You will need to delete a manual page break and then the Introduction will start on page 1
  8. You can now do the same for the front matter if you want to name your fore page styles. If you do this then you free up use of Default Page Style which you could then use instead on the Main Body style we just created.
  9. Give the front matter roman numeral page numbers, or as desired, to differentiate them from the main body of the work
  10. Update the Index

To end up with this, which admittedly could do with more work but it is sufficient to demonstrate how simple it really is.
PageNumberingExistingDocumentRenumbered.odt (21.1 KB)

#24

The problem in your example shows that Chapter 1 starts as Page #2. What if I wanted Chapter 1 to start as Page #1. The bigger problem here is the option from a pulldown menu in the program to start the numbering on a specific page. An add-on addressed this and no longer works with writer. The public is “SCREAMING” for this simple feature and yet it goes ignored with creating new style pages. Most writers are not that sophisticated. Why can’t Writer easily do what MS-Word does? That’s also the crux of this. A feature the users want goes completely ignored while other new features take priority over this very basic feature. Instead there are all these workarounds when the coders should simply make a working pulldown renumber page option that allows a staring page and starting page number within a specific page in the document. Someone already showed a working addon, so when is this simple “BASE” feature get added by the coders?

#25

Well then make the page break at the end of introduction instead. You are the author and you make the decision where to start the numbering.
.
The point of my sample was to seen how to change page numbering in an existing document. It is easier to do than it is to write it out

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