Hello!
I need to split a page vertically in two and make it so, that entered text to the left side always stays on left side and text entered on right side always stays on right side. By default text goes on to the end of page left side and then starts from the right side top to the bottom.
I added two images. First is default behavior and second, with green and red arrows, is what i wish to accomplish.
Is it somehow possible?
Regards,
Pisike Sipelgas
This is possible but may have a huge detrimental impact on performance if you don’t do it smartly.
You can’t achieve this with multi-column pages because you get your first behaviour.
The workaround is to use a table. You can define a gap between columns by setting padding distance in the Borders tab of table properties. This works even when you have no borders.
Basically you have a 2-column table allowed to split across pages.
To avoid performance problems, I recommend you create as many rows in your table as there are “synchronised parts” in your text. Usually you have no really independent columns, but blocks which are loosely related, e.g. one column is original text, the second is a translation; or you have an official statement in the left column and comments in the right one.
Limiting the extent of a cell is the key to keeping good performance because Writer needs to cache the whole cell contents before computing layout and breaks. Having too large cells also causes instabilities and crashes.
And, finally, play only with native format documents, i.e. .odt. I have no idea about the added instabilities introduced by conversion to and from DOCX. Don’t hunt for supplementary trouble with an alien format.
PS: when asking here, also mention OS name, exact LO version and save format; describe your goal in author’s terms (what is your ultimate goal?); don’t ask for a fix on your present “solution”.
Hello,
Thank You for the quick reply!
As i understand this is not natively supported, but doable using workarounds or hacks. In that case i think it’s less hassle to use Calc altogether instead of Writer.
I don’t have current solution.
I’m using Linux Mint 22.1 as OS and LO “24.2.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.4”. As for the document format - whichever does the job, Usually odt, but in this case i guess “none”.
I really hoped it’s somewhat easier to do. Maybe Calc is stil way to go. I have to think about it.
Thanks again!
Regards,
Pisike Sipelgas
Writer and Calc don’t target the same purpose. If you’re really interested in text, Writer offers many more formatting possibilities and automatic layout management that Calc. If your data is more “tabular” or numeric, without need of sophisticated layout/formatting, Calc is indeed easier.
But both solutions are not interchangeable. There are pros and cons in each.
