I’m very new to Libre and have been using Word for many years. I’m writing a report that includes some table and charts but I want to embed them in the text so I don’t have a blank space to the left or right of the table/chart. Can you help, please?
Detailed answer requires OS name, exact LO version and save format. The latter is extremely important. Don’t expect stable results if you save DOCX.
My suggested solution relies on styles. If you format everything manually (as is badly encouraged by M$ Word – but you can’t work around it), tuning the layout of your document will be a nightmare.
Handling charts and images is “easy” and you can automate the process with a dedicated frame style.
Tables in Writer are different from those in Word. They occupy an area extending from margin to margin, even when the table width is narrower than printing space. To embed a table in text, you must insert your table inside a frame but there are many constraints. The first one and most obvious is: a frame can’t straddle a page boundary. Consequently, you can do it only if your table is smaller than page height and, to avoid problem with page breaks creating huge blank space, make the table “floating” in the page so that it rearranges itself. Then, consider your table is similar to a picture and give a caption so that you can reference it from the text.
Unfortunately, creating floating frames with a predictable position is a difficult art because it involves a smartly crafted frame style (which, in addition, does not exist in DOCX). So, if you don’t already practice at least paragraph and character styles, be prepared for a really painful exercise.