Writer isn't honouring "Page Style" with a page break

[PaddyLandau]

I have a .odt document, and in it, I have a page style called Right Heading for the start of a new chapter.

I’ve set the paragraph style Heading 1 to insert a page break with page style Right Heading (see the screenshot).

When I use the style Heading 1, the page break works correctly, but the page style remains as Default Page Style. I expect the page style for that page to be Right Heading.

What am I doing wrong or misunderstanding? How can I fix this?

LibreOffice

Version: 7.5.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 36ccfdc35048b057fd9854c757a8b67ec53977b6
CPU threads: 16; OS: Linux 5.19; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-GB
Flatpak
Calc: threaded

Operating system

Linux Ubuntu 22.04

Thank you

[ajlittoz]

That should do the trick. But you may have some direct formatting overriding Heading 1 configuration. Attach a sample file with the problem. Don’t forget to mention OS name, LO version and save format (though we’ll see it with the sample file).
I am a bit upset because I don’t recognise the dialog.

[PaddyLandau]

Thanks for the reply, @ajlittoz

Don’t forget to mention OS name, LO version and save format…

I can’t believe that I forgot to do that! I’m using LibreOffice version 7.5.4.2 on Linux, and the format is LibreOffice’s native ODT file. I’ve edited the OP to include the full information.

I am a bit upset because I don’t recognise the dialog.

Right-click a paragraph > Paragraph > Edit Style > Text Flow

you may have some direct formatting overriding Heading 1

It’s currently set to Default Page Style, which I believe is (as it says) the default. How can I check if I have overridden it, and if so, undo that?

EDIT: I think that I misunderstood what you said. I’ve tried resetting the paragraph to the default style and then re-applying Heading 1. That didn’t help.

But, I also tried adding a new paragraph with that style. That did help! I’m going to test some more.

Attach a sample file with the problem.

Attached below. This is a direct extract of the first few pages of the document (with confidential information redacted).

Sample pages.odt (39.3 KB)

[PaddyLandau]

@ajlittoz — Your suggestion of direct formatting has identified the problem!

I created this document years ago (with many changes since then), and it seems that I had manually added a page-break before all the Heading 1 paragraphs. Later, I must have added the page-break to the style.

I’ve been going through the document to clear the formatting, remove the manual page breaks, and re-apply the Heading 1 style. It’s laborious (there are lots of those headers), but I don’t know a quicker way to do this!

Thank you for your help!

[ajlittoz]

@PaddyLandau: glad you found the cause. Some may think I’m going senile or I’m stuttering, but for any document bigger than a couple of pages, prohibit absolutely any form of direct formatting. And this is even more important when the document is intended to be maintained over years.

Other than that, you may have another not yet detected issue in your chapter numbering:

• in Tools>Chapter Numbering, you disconnected the Heading n family from the chapter numbering engine by assigning paragraph style [None] to all levels
• you compensated for that by playing with Outline & List parameters of the Heading n paragraph styles and assigned an outline level
• you associated Heading 2 (the only one to be numbered) to list style Numbering 123
  This is “dangerous”: this list style is not “protected” (reserved) and you may inadvertently use it also for numbered lists, causing a huge mess in numbering

Reset Tools>Chapter Numbering to its default state and adjust the numbering properties as needed. The internal Chapter Numbering is strictly reserved for that and there is no risk of conflict.

PS: your sample file behaved correctly here.

[PaddyLandau]

Thanks for the advice, @ajlittoz. I’ll play around with this to try to understand it better and to adhere to standards.

[PaddyLandau]

@ajlittoz — I have reset as you suggest, and it makes better intuitive sense, thank you.

However, I think that I know why I originally did it that strange way. I actually don’t want the Heading 2 (which, as you say, is the only numbered heading) to reset whenever I have a new Heading 1. I want the numbering to continue from where it left off, even though that might is both unusual and non-standard.

This is not a deal-breaker for me; I can live with it. But, I’d like to know if there is a way to prevent the numbering from restarting? The Table of Contents displays heading levels 1 and 2 (with levels 1 being unnumbered and levels 2 being numbered). Is that possible?

EDIT: I have figured it out. I have amended the Heading 1 paragraphs to instead use a different (but equivalent-looking) style with Outline level Level 1 so that it’s included in the Table of Contents.

Thank you

P.S. I notice that you can get paragraph breaks in your posts, but I can’t. Every paragraph continues without a space between the paragraphs. Do you know what I’m doing wrong?

[mikekaganski]

[ajlittoz]

The easy answer first:

@PaddyLandau

P.S. I notice that you can get paragraph breaks in your posts, but I can’t. Every paragraph continues without a paragraph space. Do you know what I’m doing wrong?

You’re not doing anything wrong. You’ve hit a limitation in AskLO Discourse custom configuration. They did that differently on answers and comments. But you can work around it when you realise that posts here are converted to HTML. Insert HTML directives (somme of them are however filtered out such as <u> for underline).

To insert a blank line, just prefix your paragraph with <br>.

Now back to your question.

The fact that your Heading 1 paragraphs should not cause sequence reset in higher levels clearly shows thar they are not part of the “outline” of your book. They are rather intermediate titles. They are perhaps alone on their own page.

@mikekaganski gave the “minimal trouble” solution which allows to keep your present styling. I was thinking of another one based on separate style for the intermediate titles but the problem of assigning them correct TOC styles came back to the same overall scheme.

[keme1]

@PaddyLandau

I’ve been going through the document to clear the formatting, remove the manual page breaks, and re-apply the Heading 1 style. It’s laborious (there are lots of those headers), but I don’t know a quicker way to do this!

The following procedure should be quicker (but perhaps too late). Also it probably constitutes a large edit in your document, so save your work first in case of unintended side effects. I am not sure about the volume of changes the undo chain will hold.

• Select menu item Edit - Find and replace
• Expand the More options section.
• Tick Paragraph styles
• In the Search field, select Heading 1
• Click Find all
• Select menu item Format - Remove direct formatting

[PaddyLandau]

@keme1

The following procedure should be quicker (but perhaps too late)…

Thank you for your advice. I didn’t know about that feature!

It’s a bit too late, but I am noting this for next time. Indeed, I’m noting the feature in general — I’ve been using Alternative Find & Replace for many years, and so was unaware of the built-in version.