Writer document in sections, each one with different properties

[perab1950]

Hello!
I want to create a Writer document, which is to be divided into three sections. These sections are:

1. A single header page at the beginning. This page will contain the title of the document only, possibly with an image. It will neither have a header nor a footer.
2. A table of contents. One or a few pages containing the table of contents. The header/footer will not contain page numbers but possibly the document title in the footer (or header).
3. The actual document. The document is to be paginated. However, I want the pagination to start from the first page of the document, i.e. first page of this section. While the pages of TOC in section 2 not are to be included in this page numbering, the TOC should address the appropriate pages in section 3.

The issues I want help with are:

• Creating the three sections, and apply separate page styles to each of them.
• Start the pagination of the document in section 3 from start of this section, not from the start of the whole document file.
• Every line in the Table Of Contents in section 2 address the apply to correct page number in section 3.
  Best regards, Per

[ajlittoz]

First, a small digression on Writer vocabulary.

In Writer parlance, a section is a part of a page which differs mainly by the number of columns. It remains under the same page style as the rest of the page.

What you want is to have three “parts” (for lack of an other unambiguous word) with independent “geometry” and properties. These parts will be controlled by separate page styles. Effect of a page style extends over a sequence of consecutive pages delimited by a boundary. The boundary is either the beginning and end of the file or a special page break added by Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break` where you can choose the page style to apply after the break and the starting page number.

You already have two of the needed page styles:

• built-in First Page which is intended for cover
• built-in Default Page Style for the main discourse of your document

You have to create a TOC Pages page style.

Customise all these styles to request header/footer, page number formatting (Roman vs. numeric), to set margin sizes and other settings.

After the last paragraph of your cover, Insert>More Breaks>Manual Break to switch to TOC Pages resetting page number to 1 on the same occasion.

After your TOC, do the same to switch to Default Page Style, resetting page number to 1 to start with page #1 on the first page of your main topic.

The page number captured in TOC entries is the one in effect when the heading is encountered (you can thus fancy to restart page number at every chapter so that all your chapters start at page 1 and this will be reflected in your TOC).

There are many ways to automate this process. For instance you can force Heading 1 paragraph to always page break to Default Page Style so that you spare the pain to manually insert a page break before Heading 1. But you’ll still need to do the operation manually before the first chapter to reset page number to 1 (unless every chapter start at page #1).

[perab1950]

Thank you for the advises. Often things go easy - with the help of a good instruction!