Len's Introduction to Word Processingbvres.org/.../LibreOffice_Writer_5_Tutorial.pdf · A computer with the program LibreOffice version 5 installed. LibreOffice Writer is part of

Len's Introduction to Word ProcessingLen's Introduction to Word Processing

A series of lessons for introducing beginners toLibreOffice Writer version 5

Copyright 2017 by Leonard Oliver Nasman, All rights reservedUsers are free to copy this document for non-commercial applications.

Please credit Len Nasman of the Bristol Village Ohio Computer Club on copies.http://bvres.org/Schoolhouse-web-page/schoolhouse.html

This version was produced: Sunday, January 1, 2017

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Table of ContentsTable of Contents

Forward................................................................................................1Who should use these lessons?......................................................................1Experienced typists should read this.............................................................1What is needed for this tutorial.....................................................................2Practice using the mouse...............................................................................2How the tutorial is organized.........................................................................2Get the most out of the lessons......................................................................3Avoid Trying Too Much Too Soon.................................................................3

Lesson 1 – Getting Started.................................................................5Starting LibreOffice Writer............................................................................5Entering text..................................................................................................6Printing documents........................................................................................8Saving a document.........................................................................................9

Points to remember:................................................................................10Vocabulary................................................................................................10

Lesson 2 – Formatting Text..............................................................11LibreOffice Writer display features..............................................................11Moving the Text Cursor...............................................................................14Selecting text................................................................................................14Non-printing characters..............................................................................15The Undo tool..............................................................................................16Formatting text............................................................................................17Changing the paragraph style.....................................................................17Bold, Italic, and Underline..........................................................................18Save your changes.......................................................................................18Changing Case.............................................................................................18Indenting Paragraphs..................................................................................19Changing font style and size........................................................................19Aligning paragraphs....................................................................................20Font color, and highlighting........................................................................20Bullets and lists............................................................................................21Numbered Lists............................................................................................21

Points to remember:................................................................................22Lesson 3 – Formatting Paragraphs.................................................23

The concept of styles:...................................................................................23Creating Custom Paragraph Styles:............................................................24

Lesson 4 – Formatting Page Styles..................................................29Introduction.................................................................................................29Formatting page styles:................................................................................30Creating a left side page style......................................................................31Creating a right side page style....................................................................32Creating a first page style............................................................................32Defining headers and footers:.....................................................................33Inserting Fields:...........................................................................................33

Creating a custom Title paragraph style:....................................................34Creating a custom Text Body paragraph style:...........................................35Creating custom Header paragraph styles:.................................................36Creating custom Footer paragraph styles:..................................................37

Points to remember:................................................................................38Lesson 5 – Styles, Tables, and Frames.............................................39

Importing custom styles:..............................................................................39Inserting and editing date fields:.................................................................40Using standard paragraph styles:................................................................41Adding tables:..............................................................................................42Tables or columns?......................................................................................44Inserting Frames:........................................................................................45

Points to remember:................................................................................47Lesson 6 – Adding Graphics.............................................................49

Inserting Graphics:......................................................................................49Inserting drawn graphics.............................................................................52Points to remember:.....................................................................................54

Appendix A – LibreOffice Writer Settings.....................................55Setting the Toolbar Style..............................................................................55Add the Drawing Toolbar............................................................................55The Styles and Formatting Sidebar.............................................................56

ForwardForward

My name is Len Nasman. At the time of this writing I am retired, in my mid 70's, living in BristolVillage <www.bvres.org>, a delightful retirement community in southeast Ohio, and spending alot of my time helping fellow residents with computer issues. In a former life, I wrote books toteach people how to use CAD software. Using computers does not come easy to a lot of people. It is not thatpeople are slow or feeble minded. It is simply that to many people, computers are a mysterious thing and more than a little frightening. If you are one of those who is not comfortable using computers, but you sus-pect that doing word processing with a computer might offer some advantages over an old typewriter, this tutorial is for you.

Who should use these lessons?Who should use these lessons?

I have created the LibreOffice Writer lessons for people who want to learn the basics of word processing. If all you want to do is to write one or two pages, print pages, and save a document for future use, than all you need to do is complete Lesson 1. If you want to learn more about controlling the appearance of a docu-ment, complete Lesson 2. If you want to unleash the power of word processing to create professional appearing multi-page, or even multi-chapter documents, complete Lessons 3, and 4. People who want to control columns and rows of things (as in a financial report or table) should complete Lesson 5. To see how to add graphics to documents, complete Lesson 6.

These lessons were created using the free LibreOffice Writer 5 software. There are lessons for earlier ver-sions of LibreOffice found on the Bristol Village Computer Club website. Take a quick look at the page you are reading right now and try to imagine creating a document like this using a typewriter. Imagine that you decided to add or remove some text, or maybe add a picture, and adding a picture caused the number of pages to change, or it caused words to move to a different page. A project like this collection of lessons could not be done on a typewriter. With a little investment in time learning the basics, you can enter the world of desktop publishing. Perhaps you want to create family stories to pass on to your kids. Or maybe write a family history that includes not only words, but pictures as well. LibreOffice Writer makes it possi-ble for you to tackle these projects and end up with professional quality results.

Experienced typists should read thisExperienced typists should read this

Oh oh! If you have lots of experience using a Smith Corona, or IBM Selectric, or other oldfaithful, you are at a disadvantage. You know a lot of things that you will have to forgetbefore you will be comfortable with word processing. Bite the bullet and dig in. Before longwill you will be doing things with word processing that you would never attempt with yourold typewriter.

When you create pages using a typewriter, you have to be careful to get things exactly right...the first time. You have to carefully format your text as you type. You have to plan the final appearance of the page as you go. If you were trained as a touch typist, you probably, without thinking, do an extra car-riage return after every paragraph, double space between sentences, and use spaces and tabs to format your text. You might hit the space bar a number of times to line up columns of text. The badnews is that you need to get all of these habits out of your head when you do word process-ing. The good news is that word processing makes formatting documents easier than youmight imagine, and you can throw away that bottle of white-out that you kept close to yourtypewriter.

When you do word processing on a computer, start by concentrating on getting the wordswritten. Don't worry at all about how the words will look on the page until after you have the words written. The word processor allows you to focus first on content... after all it is the words that are most important.

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LibreOffice Writer 5 Tutorials

After you have written what it is that you wish to communicate, you can then worry about about how the words will look on the page.

If you do a lot of writing where you want to use the same format and style on eachnew project, the word processor can really make your life easier. For example, Iprepare a monthly newsletter for the Bristol Village C omputer C lub. I invested alittle extra time on the first several issues establishing the format and style: twocolumns under a masthead on the first page, a header at the top of new pages, and acommon footer at the bottom of pages. Once I had the newsletter design set, addi-tional issues could be quickly created by concentrating on content rather than for-matting and style.

So expert typist, carry on... Be confident that even though at first, word processingmight feel strange and clumsy, it will not be long before your old typewriter willfeel neglected.

What is needed for this tutorialWhat is needed for this tutorial

To proceed through the lessons in this tutorial you will need the following:

➢ A computer with the program LibreOffice version 5 installed.LibreOffice Writer is part of the LibreOffice suite of programs and is available free for down-loading from the LibreOffice Internet web site. If you are new to computers, you may need to have someone help install the program. To make your display look similar to the illustrations in the lessons, some options have to be set on your installation of LibreOffice. Setup instructions are included in Appendix A of this book. After LibreOffice is installed, you will have to learn how to start the program. Starting the program simply involves clicking on an icon (a funny littlepicture) on the computer display.

➢ A printer attached to the computerIf you are buying a new printer I recommend that you consider a laser printer ratherthan an ink jet printer. Ink jet printers are cheap, but replacement ink jet cartridgesare not. Occasional printer users may find that ink cartridges dry up and quit work-ing if they are not used frequently. The toner in laser cartridges is a dry powder andwill typically have a longer shelf life.

If you want to do color printing, the price of color laser printers continues to drop. If you will be doing a large volume of printing, pay attention to the specifications of different printers. Printer specifications usually indicate how many copies a month they are designed to handle.

Practice using the mousePractice using the mouse

If you have not spent much time using the computer mouse, you need practice. Agood way to develop your mouse skill is to play solitaire or other card games. If youplay solitaire for an hour or so, you won't have to think about which way the cursormoves on the screen, or how to click and drag, or how to double click.

How the tutorial is organizedHow the tutorial is organized

In this tutorial you will find normal paragraphs, steps to be completed, and informa-tion boxes. The following styles are used to provide visual clues.

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How the tutorial is organized

✔ This is a step to be followed. When you see text with a check mark and a green background, it means that you should complete the step using your computer.

➢ This is a bullet paragraph used for lists.

This is an information box. The information boxes contain definitions of computer terms, describe various computer functions, or contain other hopefully useful information.

This is a sample text box. It is used to show text to be entered in steps.

Get the most out of the lessonsGet the most out of the lessons

To get the most out of the lessons do not rush. The basics of using LibreOffice Writer are such that you will be able to do useful work after the first lesson. However, to get control over many of the powerful features, there is quite a bit of new vocabulary to learn. There are also a lot of details involved in setting your pre-ferred styles. An effective approach is to complete a lesson, try a few of the ideas presented on your own, then go back and repeat the lesson from scratch. Most people are amazed at how many new things appear in a lesson the second or third time through. Remember, it is the hasty person who takes the most time. Invest-ing a little extra time learning basic word processing principles will pay off in the long run by saving large amounts of time creating complex documents.

Avoid Trying Too Much Too SoonAvoid Trying Too Much Too Soon

You will be tempted to get into your own projects right away. However, if you werelearning to play the piano you would not be eager to perform on stage until you had afew lessons and had spent a bit of time practicing. You would not expect to present aconcert the first time you sat down at the piano.

The same is true with word processing and desktop publishing. You need to take a fewlessons and practice a bit before you will be ready to perform. So, be patient. Go through each of the lessons more than once. If you were learning to play the piano, you would practice the same piece more than once. Give your brain a chance to absorb the new vocabulary and basic principles of word processing. If you try to rush the process, you will probably become frustrated and give up. If you are patient, your reward will be the ability to quickly create polished publications.

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HAVE FUN!

Lesson 1 – Getting StartedLesson 1 – Getting Started

Please memorize vocabulary words as you proceed through these lessons. Most folks who have trouble get-ting into word processing have trouble because they are not familiar with the slanguage used by computer people.

The Windows Desktop is the name of the display on the screen when Windows is first started. The folks who invented this thought that the display somehow mimicked a person's office desk where you might have documents or tools lying around.

Starting LibreOffice WriterStarting LibreOffice Writer

Starting LibreOffice Writer with acomputer that is running the Windowsoperating system may be done severalways depending on how the computerhas been set up. In most situations,you will have a shortcut on the desk-top or on the Quick Launch Taskbar.There are versions of LibreOffice forthe Mac and Linux operating systems.The program functions are the same,but the displays may look differentfrom the illustrations in this tutorial.

The Taskbar is a horizontal areaat the bottom of the Windowsdisplay.

Select means to move the mouse cursor over the desired item and click the left mouse button once.

Double click means to move the mouse cursor over the desired item and click the left mouse button twice, quickly, click-click.

A LibreOffice shortcut on the Taskbarwill start the program. If the shortcuticon is not available on your computer,skip to the next step.

✔ Start LibreOffice Writer

If there is a LibreOffice icon on theTaskbar, select it to open the pro-gram. If there is a LibreOfficeshortcut icon on the Desktop, dou-ble click on it to start the program.If you do not see a shortcut select Start, All Programs, LibreOffice.

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Illustration 1: Windows 10 LibreOffice shortcuts.

Illustration 2: The LibreOffice Open window.


LibreOffice version 5 opens with thumb nail pictures of recently opened documents (see Illustration 2).

✔ Select Writer Document from the LibreOffice display to start a new LibreOffice Writer document.

Once a new Writer Document is open, your display should look similar to Illustration 3. The mouse cursor style will change as you move the cursor over different parts of the display. When the cursor is in a text body area, it will appear as a vertical line. When it is moved over a tool bar area, it will appear as a selectionarrow.

Observe in Illustration 3 that there is a small symbol in the upper left corner of the display. This is a non printing character symbol. The symbol in the illustration is a paragraph symbol. Other nonprinting characters are spaces and tabs. Some beginners like to turn the non printing char-acter symbols off (by select the tool shown in Illustration 3). This is a bad idea since thenon printing character symbols provide useful information about how a document is for-matted.

Mouse Cursor: the mouse cursor is the little picture that moves around when youmove the mouse. This pointer will change shape when you move it over different parts of the Windows display. When the mouse cursor looks like an I beam, it is called the Text Cursor.

Entering textEntering text

✔ Move the text cursor near the upper left corner of the document area and click the leftmouse button once.

This step will insure that the LibreOffice Writer program Window is active and that the textcursor will be at the start of the new document.

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SelectionCursor

TextCursor

Illustration 3: New Untitled LibreOffice Writer document.

Entering text

Note to experienced typists: With an old typewriter you had to do a carriagereturn at the end of every line. With a mechanical typewriter, the carriage andpaper moved under the hammers as you typed and you had to shove a leverto move the carriage back to the left to start a new line. With an electric type-writer a carriage return key provided a similar function. On the computer, the Enter key appears to do the same thing as the return key on an electric typewriter. In word processing, however, the computer automatically wraps text to the next line when the edge ofthe writing space is reached. You have to forget the habit of pressing the Enter (or return) key at the end of each line. The only time you should press the Enter key is at the end of a para-graph.

✔ Type the following paragraph in the LibreOffice Writer window.

This is my first LibreOffice Writer document. I am now typing a new paragraph into the docu-ment. I will not press the enter key until I am finished with the first paragraph.

✔ When you have finished typing your first paragraph, press the Enter key to end the paragraph and start a new paragraph.

Continue typing and add two new paragraphs as shown. (Do not worry if there is not a double line space between paragraphs. Later, you will see how to adjust paragraph spacing.)

I am now typing a second paragraph. It is important to remember that in word processing, paragraphs are ended by pressing the enter key. It is also important to know that a paragraphin word processing may consist of several sentences, one sentence, one word, or even no words at all. I will press the enter key to end this paragraph.

This is the start of the third paragraph in the document. The vertical line that moves along as Itype is called the text cursor. The text cursor marks the point where new characters will ap-pear as I type. There are a number of ways to move the text cursor around the document. I will learn a number of techniques for moving the text cursor as I go through these tutorials.

Your display should now look similar to Illustration 4.

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Illustration 4: Adding paragraphs


In Illustration 4 there are no extra lines or spaces between paragraphs. Resist the temptation to enter extra lines between paragraphs. Also resist the temptation to add an extra space between sentences. In the next lesson, you will learn how to automatically create spaces between paragraphs. But first, you will see how easy it is to print your document.

Printing documentsPrinting documents

Observe the upper part of the display in Illustration 5. (You will learn about more parts of the display in the next lesson.) Observe that the third horizontal area below the top of the display (called the Toolbar) has a row of small pictures (called tool icons). If you move the mouse cursor over these tool icons and pause, a Tool Tip will briefly open that shows what the tool does.

Illustration 5 shows the mouse cursor positioned over the Print tool, and the Tool Tip shows Print (Ctrl+P)This means that when this tool is selected, or if the Ctrl key is held down and the P key is pressed, the Printdialog box will open.

A Tool Tip is a message that appearswhen the mouse cursor is hoveredover a tool icon.

Select means that the mouse cursor ispositioned over a tool and the leftmouse button is pressed once.

In Illustration 6 the default printer for thecomputer being used has been set to HPLaserjet. The name of your default printerwill probably be different. Some computershave access to more than one printer. The default printer is the one where documentswill be printed, unless the user selects analternate printer.

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Illustration 5: The Print tool.

Illustration 6: The Print dialog box.

Printing documents

In general, a default setting is one that is used by the computer unless the user makes a differ-ent choice.

✔ Select the desired printer in the Print dialog box and then select OK button, and wait for your document to be printed. If it is not printed, make sure that the printer is turned on and has been properly set up for your computer.

Saving a documentSaving a document

You should never have to typeanything twice when you areusing word processing. How-ever, you have to Save yourdocument as a File or you willnever see it again. Saving adocument is done by usinganother tool on the Toolbar.The Save tool is shown inIllustration 5.

✔ Select the Save tool onthe Toolbar.

At this point the Save As dia-log box will open. This dialogbox will vary depending onwhich version of Windows is being used. The Save As dialog box shows the Directory Path, or the location where the file will be saved. The Default folder is the user Documents folder. However, the folder should bechanged to your preferred location for saving files for this tutorial.

➢ The Directory Path in Illustration 7 shows that the file will be saved in a folder named Lesson 1-5, which is in a folder named LibreOfficeWriter 5, which is in a folder named LibreOffice 5, which is in a folder named Tutorials.

In any case, there is a File name: text box for entering the name of the new file.

✔ Enter My Lesson 1 Document in the File Name text box. Then select the Save button in the Save As dialog box.

Whenever you want to retrieve this document when LibreOffice is running, you can use the Open tool on the Toolbar.

Now that you have some idea about how LibreOffice Writer works, you should practice a bit before starting the next lesson.

✔ Select the X in the upper right corner of the display to close the LibreOffice Writer program.

✔ Go back to the beginning of this Lesson and go through the steps again. However, this time enter your own text, and save the document with your own file name.

There is quite a bit of information to learn about LibreOffice Writer. The good news is that you only have to learn a small percentage of what the program can do for you to be able to do useful things. The best way to become comfortable with the program is to repeat each of these lessons two or three times before moving onto the next lesson.

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Illustration 7: The Save As dialog box.


A big problem facing new word processing users is vocabulary. Try to remember the words in these lessons that use this style. These are words you have to know in order to remain sane as you go through the lessons. Computer programmers have the habit of taking good old words that you have known forever and giving them brand new meanings. This can make for confusion. If you make the effort to learn the word processingvocabulary, you will get farther faster.

Congratulations. You have now created, printed, and saved your first document. You now have enough information to do useful work. Practice by creating a document or two of your own. In the next lesson, you will see how to enhance the appearance of documents.

Points to remember:➢ Paragraphs may have several sentences, one word, or no words at all.➢ To end a paragraph, and start a new paragraph, press the Enter key.➢ To print a document select the Print tool from the Toolbar. ➢ To save a document, select the Save tool from the Toolbar. Then adjust the Directory Path

to the desired folder and enter a new file name.

Vocabulary➢ Desktop: The Desktop refers to the main display on the screen when the Windows operating

system opens.➢ Quick Launch Taskbar: The Quick Launch Taskbar is a collection of one-click access to

opening application programs. In most Windows displays the Taskbar is a horizontal area atthe bottom of the display, but some users change its location.

➢ Select: Select means to move the mouse cursor over an object and click the left mouse button once.

➢ Double click: Double click means to move the mouse cursor over an object and click the left mouse button twice.

➢ Document: A word processing Document is a computer file that contains text and style information.

➢ Default: Default settings are those settings that are applied unless the user makes changes that replace the Default setting. For example, the Default folder for saving files might be Documents, but a user might change the folder for saving to something like My Writer Documents.

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Lesson 2 – Formatting TextLesson 2 – Formatting Text

LibreOffice Writer display features LibreOffice Writer display features

To learn how to do more than simple typing and printing requires that you know some basic display featuresand functions of LibreOffice Writer. Take a few minutes to review the different parts of the LibreOffice Writer display as shown in Illustration 2. You can learn a lot about how to use LibreOffice Writer by simply examining the different tools that can enhance your word processing experience.

✔ If it is not already on your display, Open the document named My Lesson 1 Document.

To open a document, select the word File from the Menu Bar, hover over Recent Documentsfrom the pop down menu, then move the mouse pointer and select My Lesson 1 Document from the pop out menu.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, adjust the folder, and enter My Lesson 2 Document as the file name.

You are probably anxious to get on with creating and formatting text. Please be patient. Spending a little extra time at this point will save you tons of grief and speed up your work later.

Your display should look similar to that shown in Illustration 1. The next section will describe the different parts of the display. Try to remember the names of the different parts of the display. They will be referred to in future steps. You may want to refer back to Illustration 2 from time to time to refresh you memory about the parts of the LibreOffice Writer display.

Beginning word processing users sometimes get frustrated and feel lost because of the strange vocabulary used by software programmers. You will get along better if you learn the meanings of the words as they apply to the LibreOffice program.

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Illustration 8: My Lesson 2 Document.


Title Bar: The top horizontal line on the display is called the Title Bar. This is common to all Windows software. It contains the name of the program window (LibreOffice Writer), and the name of the document file that is active.

Menu Bar: The second horizontal line on the display is the Menu Bar. If you position the mouse pointer on a word on the Menu Bar and click the left mouse button once, a list of menuchoices will pop down. This provides access to various program tools. These will be dis-cussed as they are needed.

Galaxy Tool Bar: The third horizontal line is the Galaxy Tool Bar. There are other LibreOffice Tool Bar styles available.

If your Tool Bar looks different from the example, you may want to go through Appendix A, and adjust your display settings to those used in these lessons.

Tool Tip: If you position the mouse pointer over a tool and hover there for a bit, a Tool Tip will appear for a short time. The Tool Tip provides a hint as to what the tool is for.

Text Formatting Tool Bar: The fourth horizontal line on the display is the Text Formatting Tool Bar. This is used to control the font style and alignment for text.

The Text Formatting Tool Bar is what is known as a context sensitive Tool Bar. The Tool Bar in this area changes depending on what is happening. When the text cursor is on the display, the Text Formatting Tool Bar appears. If a graphic object is selected, the Graphics Formatting Tool Bar appears.

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Illustration 9: LibreOffice Writer Display Features

LibreOffice Writer display features

Properties sidebar: The Properties sidebar has several sections. These will be explored in later lessons.

Text Margin: The Text Margin shows the area of the page available for text. There is a format-ting option for adjusting margins.

Page Boundary: The white rectangle shows the Page Boundary.

Page Count: The Page Count shows the page where the text cursor is currently located, and also shows the total number of pages in the document.

Word Count: The Word Count shows how many words are in the current document.

Drawing Tool Bar: The Drawing Tool Bar is used to add graphics, pictures and drawing ob-jects, to the document. (It may be turned off on your display. Appendix A shows how to turn it on.)

Page Zoom: The Page Zoom control has a slider that can be dragged to zoom out or in on the page. The – and + signs at either end of the Page Zoom control can be selected to decrease or increase the zoom factor.

Keep in mind that the Page Zoom factor does not control how the page will look when printed. If you want the text on your page to appear larger for easy editing, but you do not want the finished document to use a large font, do not change the font size. Simply use the Page Zoom slider to zoom in and out on the display.

Before messing with the appearance of the document, we need to review some of the basic differences between typewriters and word processors.

The characters on typewriters all have exactly the same width on a page. In reality, differ-ent characters should have different widths to look their best. In the old days this was doneby typesetters who picked letters out of a box and lined them up in a printing press to formwords. This was a very time-consuming process, but it allowed for better-looking print.After all, the letter W should not take the same amount of space as the letter I. Typewriterswere stuck with same width characters, and used blank spaces and carriage returns to format pages. Word processing software replaces the limited typewriter formatting and the old slow typesetter. In fact, word pro-cessing software has put typesetters out of business.

Word processors use what are called proportional fonts. This means that a w is not the same width as an i. This is where experienced typists can get frustrated with word processing. With the typewriter you could line up columns of text by using spaces or tabs. The same number of spaces always aligned nicely with a similar number of characters because on a typewriter all characters are the same width.

Proportional Fonts: In word processing, different characters, or letters, have different widths. The set of characters that have different widths are referred to as Proportional Fonts.

With word processors, we do not rely on spaces to align things since a space character is not the same width as all of the other characters. If this idea bothers you, don't despair. Formatting text with a word processor will give you power and speed beyond the wildest dreams of an experienced typist. One nice thing is you nolonger need a bottle of white out to fix typos. Editing on the display will save lots of paper. You do have to learn some basic tricks. One trick you need to know is how to move the cursor around the document withoutusing the mouse.

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Moving the Text CursorMoving the Text Cursor

Text Cursor: The Text Cursor is a flashing vertical linesomewhere in the body of the text where the mouse pointerhas been positioned when the left mouse button has beenclicked. The cursor control keys are the 4 arrow keys to theright of the main part of most keyboards.

✔ Observe the location of the Text Cursor.

✔ Press the different cursor control keys on thekeyboard and watch how the Text Cursor movesaround.

✔ Practice using the cursor control keys until you canposition the text cursor exactly where you want it.

Most people can position the Text Cursor more precisely using the cursor control keys than they can using the mouse.

Here is a trick for jumping to the beginning or end of a line. Note that there are keys just above the cursor control keys that are marked Home and End.

✔ Position the Text Cursor on a line somewhere in the middle of the document.

✔ Press the Home key and watch the Text Cursor jump to the beginning of the line.

✔ Press the End key and watch the Text Cursor jump to the end of the line.A combination key press will jump to the beginning or end of the document.

✔ To jump to the beginning of a document, Hold the Ctrl key down and, while holding it down, press the Home key. (In the future this will be stated press Ctrl+Home.

✔ To jump to the end of a document, press Ctrl+End.By now you probably have noticed that the mouse pointer changes shape as you move it over different areasof the computer display. When you move the mouse pointer over areas outside of the text on the display it has the shape of a pointer, while when it is over the text in a document it changes to an I. The I shape helps you select a precise location for the Text Cursor.

You can also use the mouse to control the Text Cursor location.

✔ Move the mouse pointer to a new location in the text and click the left mouse button once to placethe Text Cursor at that location.

✔ Practice positioning the Text Cursor using the mouse.

Selecting textSelecting text

Text that is currently selected will be highlighted.

Editing, or changing, text requires that you be able to accu-rately select the part of the text to be edited. There are sev-eral selection tricks available for use. The first set of theseselection tricks requires a bit of mouse button clicking dex-terity.

Double click means to quickly click the left mouse button twice.

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Illustration 10: The cursor control keys.

Illustration 11: Observe the selected text.

Selecting text

To select a single word, position the Text Cursor somewhere in the word and double click.

✔ Practice selecting words until you can do it easily.

Triple click means to quickly click the left mouse button three times.

To select a complete sentence, position the mouse pointer somewhere in the sentence and triple click.

✔ Practice selecting sentences until you can do it easily.

Quadruple click means to quickly click the left mouse button four times.

To select a complete paragraph, position the mouse pointer somewhere in the paragraph and quadruple click.

✔ Practice selecting paragraphs until you can do it easily.

Shift click means to position the Text Cursor at the beginning point of the selection, hold the shift key down, and while holding the shift key down move the mouse pointer to the end of theselection and click the left mouse button once.

To make an extended text selection use the shift click option.

✔ Practice using the shift click option until you can accurately select text.You can also select text by clicking and dragging. This means to position the mouse pointer at the beginningpoint of the selection, click and hold the left mouse button down, and move the mouse pointer to the end of the desired selection. The problem with clicking and dragging is that it is easy to drag selected text to a new location by mistake.

To de-select text, move the mouse pointer to an un-selected location and click the left mouse button once.

Here is one last text selection trick.

Ctrl+A means to hold the Ctrl key down and, while holding it down, press the A key.

✔ To select all of the text in a document, press Ctrl+A.

✔ Practice selecting all text until it is easy to do.

✔ Go back and review and practice all of the different methods for selecting text.

Non-printing charactersNon-printing characters

In computer slanguage, characters include the alphabet, numbers, punctuation marks, and so on. There are also several characters that do not appear when printed. When you press keys like Enter, the Space Bar, andthe Tab key, you are actually adding non-printing characters to the document. It is very helpful to be able to see these non-printing characters on the display because they show exactly how a document is formatted.

Illustration 5 shows the symbols for three non-printing characters: 5 Paragraphs (Enter key presses), 3 TAB key presses, and 10 Space bar presses.

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There is a tool that toggles the display of non-print-ing characters on and off.

✔ From the Galaxy Tool Bar, select the Non-printing Characters tool.

The Non-printing Characters tool is a toggle. This means that each time it is selected it switches between on and off.

When the Nonprinting Characters tool is on, the non-printing characters appear on the display.

Many beginners find the display of non-printing characters a bit annoying. However, I do not like to work with it off because I cannot see how things are formatted. If you ever print a document and wondered why an extra empty page comes out of the printer, it is because you have extra blank paragraphs that extend to a new page. The non-printing character display will reveal those blank paragraphs.

If you want to see how your document looks without showing the non-printing characters, se-lect the Page Preview tool.

The Undo toolThe Undo tool

This is a good time to mention the Undo tool found on the Tool Bar. When-ever you do one or more things that you wish you had not done, worry not!Just select the Undo tool one or more times to return to the previous stateof your document.

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Illustration 12: Nonprinting characters

Illustration 13: The page preview and non-printing character tools

The Undo tool

Expert user trick: There is a handy shortcut key press that works the same as the undo tool. Press Ctrl+Z to undo something. (This trick also works in other Windows programs.)

There is also a Redo tool (just to the right of the Undo tool) in case you Undo too much.

Formatting textFormatting text

When you first start a new documentin LibreOffice Writer it uses what arecalled default settings. There arethree different settings in use when-ever you add text to a document: Paragraph style, Font style, and Font Size. The settings used for theLesson 1 Document were the Defaultparagraph style, the Liberation Seriffont type, and 12 point type size. Thecurrently active settings are shown on the left side of the Text Formatting Tool Bar.

Observe that the right sides of the three format options shown have a tiny down pointing ar-row. When this arrow is selected, a pop down window will show additional choices.

Remember that a paragraph in word processing can be several sentences, a single sentence, a single word, or no words at all. Every paragraph in a LibreOffice Writer document has a paragraph style. Let's change theparagraph style used in the My Lesson 2 Document.

Changing the paragraph styleChanging the paragraph style

Note the example in Illustration 8.

✔ With My Lesson 2 Documenton the display, press Ctrl+Ato select all of the text.

✔ Select the small arrow to theright of the Paragraph Stylesection of the Format ToolBar (see Illustration 8).

✔ Select Text Body from thepop down menu.

✔ Move the mouse pointer awayfrom any text and click the left mouse button once to de-select the text.

Observe that there is now extra space between paragraphs. This is because the Text Body paragraph style commands the computer to place a specific amount of space after each paragraph.

Typists used multiple carriage returns to put spaces between lines and paragraphs. This is notnecessary or desirable when using word processing software. If you want to change line spacing,

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Illustration 14: Default styles

Illustration 15: Changing paragraph styles


there are ways to change spacing for an entire document with a couple of clicks. These tricks will be covered in a future lesson.

Next, the font style will be changed on some text. Do you remember how to select text? If not, you should go back and review the section on Selecting Text.

Bold, Italic, and UnderlineBold, Italic, and Underline

Remember how to use the shift clickmethod to select words? If not goback and review the Selecting textsection.

✔ In the first paragraph, selectthe words LibreOfficeWriter.

✔ In the Format Tool Bar, selectthe Bold tool.

Note that the Bold, Italic, andUnderline tools are toggles. Eachtime they are selected, the selected character style will switched. Observe that the font style tools are repeated in the Properties sidebar. You can use either the Formatting tool bar or the Properties sidebar to make changes to selected items.

NOTE: when the settings in the Text Formatting Tool Bar are changed, the change will only apply to text that is currently selected, or to text that is added at the current cursor location af-ter the change is made.

Save your changesSave your changes

To avoid getting blue bruises on your fore-head because the power went out and youlost changes to the document you have beenworking on for the last couple of hours, youshould get into the habit of saving your docu-ment after making changes. This is very easyin LibreOffice.

Illustration 10 shows the Save tool. Whenthere are un-saved changes in a document,the Save tool looks different than when the most recent changes have been saved. Every time you make sig-nificant changes to a document, select the Save tool to prevent losing the changes.

Changing CaseChanging Case

Unlike typewriters, word processors make it easy to change the case of characters.

✔ In the first paragraph, select the words enter key.

✔ In the Format Tool Bar, select the Bold and Italic tools.

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Illustration 16: Changing font styles

Illustration 17: The Save tool

Changing Case

✔ With the words enter key still selected,select from the Menu Bar, Format,Text, Captalize Every Word (seeIllustration 11).

Observe the many options for chang-ing case in Illustration 11. If you everaccidentally hit the Caps Lock key andtype for a while before you notice it,you do not have to delete and type ev-erything again. Simply select the de-sired text and use desired Text menuoption to fix the problem.

Indenting ParagraphsIndenting Paragraphs

In the next step, you will see how to indentan entire paragraph in once step.

✔ With the Text Cursor anywhere in the second paragraph, select the Increase Indent tool (seeIllustration 12).

Note that each time you select the IncreaseIndent tool, the amount the current para-graph is indented will increase. Also there isa Decrease Indent tool that removes theindent.

Don’t forget the Undo and Redo options.

Changing font style and sizeChanging font style and size

✔ Press Ctrl+Home to move the cursor to the beginning of the first paragraph, and then press the Enter key to add a new paragraph before the current first paragraph.

✔ Press Ctrl+Home to move the cursor to the beginning of the new paragraph and type My Document Title.

✔ Press the Enter key to add a new paragraph.

✔ Select the My Document Title text.

✔ With the My Document Title text selected, make the My Document Title text Bold.

✔ With the My Document Title text selected, change the font style to Ariel.✔ With the My Document Title text selected, change the font size to 18.

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Illustration 18: Options for changing case

Illustration 19: Increase indent tool


Aligning paragraphsAligning paragraphs

✔ With the text cursor in the titleparagraph, select the Centered toolfrom the Format Tool Bar.

The selected words should now be centeredin your document.

✔ Move the mouse pointer over the 4 differentalignment tools and note the pop up Tool Tipsshow Align Left, Center Horizontally,Align Right and Justified. The Justifiedoption makes both the left and right sides ofthe paragraph line up with the margins. (Tryto do that with your old typewriter!)

Font color, and highlightingFont color, and highlighting

Next, the font color and highlighting tools will beexplored. The Font Color, Highlighting, and Background tools are on the right side of the of theText Formatting Tool Bar.

✔ With the words My Document Title selected,select the small down pointing arrow on theright edge of the Font Color tool and changethe color to Red.

As you move the mouse cursor over the colorsamples a tool tip will show the names of thecolors.

The Highlight Tool will change the color ofthe text background. This is similar to usingone of the old highlighter felt pens. This fea-ture can be used to call attention to words orphrases.

✔ In the last paragraph, select the wordsThere are a number of ways to move the Text Cursor around the document. Then select the smalldown pointing arrow on the right edge of the Highlighting tool and change the color to Pale Yellow.

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Illustration 20: Centering the title text

This paragraph is aligned left.

This paragraph is centered.

This paragraph is aligned right.

This paragraph is justified. Observe thatjustified paragraphs have both the left andright sides aligned to the edges of the marginsof the page (or in this example, the frame). Thejustified alignment makes for a neatappearance. However, for narrow columns oftext or for large font sizes, the spacing betweenwords may appear unnatural. This is becausethe system adjusts word spacing so that bothsides will be aligned.

Illustration 21: Paragraph alignment options

Illustration 22: Changing font color

Font color, and highlighting

Next, several new paragraphs will be addedto demonstrate some more formattingoptions.

Bullets and listsBullets and lists

✔ Press Ctrl+End to move the TextCursor to the end of the document.

✔ Press the Enter key to start a newparagraph.

✔ With the Text Cursor in the last(empty) paragraph, enter the words This paragraph uses bullets.

✔ From the Format Tool Bar, and withthe Text Cursor at the end of the Thisparagraph uses bullets paragraph,select the Bullets On/Off tool.

✔ Press the Enter key and add a newparagraph with the words Thisparagraph also uses bullets.

✔ Press the Enter key twice.Observe that when you press the enter key toend a paragraph with bullets, the followingparagraph will also have bullets. If you press the enter key again without adding text, the paragraph style will revert to no bullets. Also, the Bullets tool is a toggle. If you select it with the cursor in a paragraph that has bullets, the bullets will be turned off.

Numbered ListsNumbered Lists

The last formatting to be applied will demon-strate a numbered list.

✔ With the Text Cursor on the last lineof your document, enter the word One and then select the NumberingOn/Off tool from the Format ToolBar.

✔ Press the Enter key and type Listagain followed by the Enter key.

✔ Type Another list paragraph, Enter, Maybe this is not in the list, Enter, This is in the list, Enter, Enter.

You should now have a list numbered from 1 through 5. Next, one of the lines will have the list number turned off.

✔ Move the Text Cursor to the line that has the text Maybe this is not in the list.

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Illustration 23: The Highlight Tool

Illustration 24: The Bullets Tool

Illustration 25: The Numbering toggle tool


✔ Select the Numbering On/Off tool from the Format Tool Bar.Your document should now appear similar to Illustration 18.

Don’t forget to Save your document often.

✔ From the Galaxy Tool Bar, select the Save tool.This completes a tour of some of the Text Formatting options in LibreOffice. Therehave been a lot of concepts covered in this lesson. It is more than most folks canremember in only one trip through. To get the most out of this lesson, start a brandnew document and go through this lesson again. I know, I know, this seems like a lotof work. But if you were tasking piano lessons you would expect to practice eachpiece more than once. Learning word processing is like learning to play the piano. Ittakes a bit of practice to become good at it.

✔ After going through this lesson again, you should Select File New, Text Document from the Menu Bar, create a new text document of your own, and practice the various formatting options.

Points to remember:➢ White-out is a thing of the past. Don't worry about typing precisely the first time. Get the

content down while the thoughts are fresh and then edit any typos later.➢ Word processors use proportional fonts. This means that you cannot rely on typing spaces

to align things. Use paragraph styles to control Text Formatting.➢ If you want to align rows and columns of text (such as a price list for example), you should

use a table (discussed in a later lesson) that will keep things aligned for you.➢ This paragraph uses bullets, but it also uses something called a hanging indent. That

means that lines in the paragraph, after the first line, are indented more than the firstline. This is an extra sentence to add more to this paragraph example. Creating custom paragraph styles will be covered in a later chapter.

➢ Let LibreOffice Writer take care of spacing for you. Paragraph styles automatically include the amount of space before, after, above, and below, paragraphs and the space between lines within paragraphs. These tricks will be covered in later lessons.

➢ You should enter all of the text into your documents first and worry about style and appearance after you have the words in place.

➢ Use the cursor control keys to move the text cursor precisely around the document.➢ Press End to jump to the end of a line.➢ Press Ctrl+End to jump to the end of a document.➢ Press Home to jump to the beginning of a line.➢ Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the beginning of a document.➢ Double click on a word to select a word.➢ Triple click to select a complete sentence.➢ Quadruple click to select a complete paragraph.➢ Toggle the Non-printing Character tool on the Galaxy Tool Bar to reveal the location of

spaces, tabs, and enter key presses.➢ Use the Text Formatting Tool Bar to control font styles and placement.➢ Use the Text Formatting Tool Bar to control font color, and highlighting.➢ Use the Undo tool to fix a mistake.

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Lesson 3 – Formatting ParagraphsLesson 3 – Formatting Paragraphs

The concept of styles:The concept of styles:

Styles: In the context of LibreOffice Writer, Styles refers to the characteristics of a part of a doc-ument. For example, a Page Style includes information about page size, layout (portrait or landscape), margins, columns, background color, and more. A Paragraph Style includes infor-mation about indents and spacing, alignment, font, borders, and more.

Casual word processing users adjust things like page margins and page layoutmanually, and have to repeat making these adjustments on every new page andevery new document. However, to enjoy the time savings and power available inLibreOffice Writer you must learn how to use and control document styles. Theconcept of styles is critical to unleashing the power of desktop publishing. In thislesson, creating Paragraph Styles will be discussed. However, the idea of stylesapplies to other aspects of documents. Once you understand how to adjust Para-graph Styles, you will have a head start on knowing how to use Page, Character,and Frame Styles.

The idea of styles is that different parts of a document share similar characteristics(like font size, spacing between lines, background color, and more). By storingthese characteristics in collections of Styles, it is possible to quickly change oradjust everything in a document

Before we start, you need to know about the LibreOffice Writer Sidebar. First, besure that the Sidebar is turned on.

✔ Open the LibreOffice Writer program.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select View, and note if the Sidebar option is ON. If it is off, toggle it on.

The Sidebar has 4 options: Properties, Styles and Formatting, Gallery, and Navigator. In this lesson, we will concentrate on the Styles and Formatting sidebar option.

✔ From the Sidebar, select the Styles and Formatting option.

✔ Use the small arrow near the bottom of the sidebar to open a pop down selection list and select the Custom Styles display option.

The Styles and Formatting sidebar should now be empty (see Illustration 3).

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Illustration 26: ViewSidebar

Illustration 27: Sidebar Options


Creating Custom Paragraph Styles:Creating Custom Paragraph Styles:

One of the biggest differences between typing and word processing is the notion of Paragraphs and Para-graph Styles. In Lesson 2 you saw how to change the paragraph style in your document from Default to Text Body. In this Lesson, you will learn how to create your own custom Paragraph Styles.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File, New, Text Document.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, adjust the Save in: location to your preferred folder, and then enter the file name My Poem.

Illustration 3 shows the My Poem document with no custom styles yet defined. (You will add text to your poem a little later.) Observe that the Text Formatting Toolbar shows that the Default Paragraph Style is in use.

Two new paragraph styles will be created. One for the title and the other for the poem text body.

The Styles and Formatting Sidebar has a row of tools across the top (see Illustration 3). The first tool on theleft is the Paragraph Styles tool. When this tool has been selected, a list of paragraph styles appears in the Window. The bottom of the dialog box has a List Box that controls the category of styles displayed. In this example, we will limit the list to Custom Styles.

✔ From the Styles and Formatting Window, Toolbar, select the Paragraph Style tool.

✔ Select the small arrow at the lower right corner of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar.

✔ Select the Custom Styles from the pop down list.

✔ Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting dialog box and select New from the pop up menu.

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Illustration 28: My Poem LibreOffice Writer document

Creating Custom Paragraph Styles:

This opens the Paragraph Style dialog box.

Observe that there are a number of tabs across the top of the Paragraph Style dialog box. The first step in creating a new paragraph style is to name the style.

✔ In the Paragraph Style dialog box,select the Organizer tab.

✔ In the Name area of the ParagraphStyle dialog box, type the name MyPoem Body.

(Do not press the Enter key yet or thedialog box will close. If this happens,right click on the My Poem Body stylein the Styles and Formatting sidebarand select Modify to reopen the dialogbox.)

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, select My Poem Body.

✔ In the Inherit from area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use thesmall arrow on the right side of the text box and select None from the List Box.

Do not press enter or select the OK button in the dialog box until all adjustments have been made.

Next, the Alignment and Font options will be set for the My Poem Body paragraph style.

✔ Select the Indents & Spacing tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Set the Spacing, Above paragraph to 0.20.

✔ Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Set the Alignment to Center.✔ Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

Since some installed programs add new Windows fonts, the exact list of fonts in your com-puter will depend on what programs have been installed.

✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the poem text. (In this example, Antique, Bold, 24pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)

✔ Select OK to close the Paragraph Style dialog box.Now that a paragraph style has been created for a poem body, a second paragraph style will be created for the poem title.

✔ Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Window and select New from the pop up menu.

✔ In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, type the name My Poem Title.

In the next step be sure to select My Poem Body, not My Poem Title.

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Illustration 29: My Poem Body style dialog box


✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the scroll arrow to select My PoemBody.

✔ In the Inherit from area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select None.

Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made.

✔ Select the Alignment tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and set the Alignment to Center.✔ Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and select a Font, Typeface and Size for

the poem text. (In this example, Antique, Bold, 36pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)

✔ Select the Font Effects tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Toggle the Shadow effect ON.

✔ Select OK to close the Paragraph Style dialog box.Now that the paragraph styles for the poem have been established, it is time to write a poem. Here is a poemfor you to add to the document. If you wish, substitute your own poem verses.

✔ With the Text Cursor on the first line of the My Poem document, double click on the My Poem Title style in the Styles and Formatting Window.

✔ Enter My First Poem on the first line of the document and then press the Enter key twice.

✔ Then enter the following paragraphs (or a poem of your own). Press the Enter key to insert the blank lines shown.

It has not been read in Rome

It has not been read in Nome

It is not about a fellow

Or about the color yellow

It is not fit to publish

But is only poet rubbish

Observe that you set the paragraph style to My Poem Title for the first line, but as soon as you pressed the Enter key, the paragraph style changed to My Poem Body. This is because when the My Poem Title was cre-ated, the next style was set to My Poem Body. This trick can save a lot of time.

Now that you have created a poem, it is time to save it. Since you already created the file name for this doc-ument in an earlier step, you can use the Save tool to update the contents of the document.

✔ From the Galaxy Toolbar, select the Save tool.

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Creating Custom Paragraph Styles:

Now it is time for you to experiment.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File Save As and enter a new file name to create a new document.

✔ Replace the poem title and lines with your own poem.

✔ In the Styles and Formatting dialog box, right click on the My Poem Body paragraph style, select Modify, and change the font characteristics.

✔ Repeat the previous step for the My Poem Title style.See how easy it to control the styles of an entire document. This is powerful stuff. If you write a 100 page document, you can change the fonts and spacing in 100 pages with a couple of mouse clicks.

To get the most out of this lesson, open a brand new text document, and go back through this lesson again, word by word, from the beginning.

Remember, if you were learning to play the piano, you would practice each piecemore than once. The same drill and practice technique will help develop word pro-cessing skills faster than trying to do too much too soon. If you rush, there will notbe enough “soak time” for the new information to be absorbed.

Too see what fonts are installed on your computer, set File Explorer to This PC, Drive C:, Windows, Fonts.

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Illustration 30: My First Poem


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Illustration 31: Viewing installed fonts

Lesson 4 – Formatting Page StylesLesson 4 – Formatting Page Styles

IntroductionIntroduction

In Lesson 3, custom paragraph styles were created. In this lesson, new Page Styles will be created. Remem-ber, the idea of styles applies to other aspects of documents. Once you understand how to adjust Paragraph and Page Styles, you will have a head start on knowing how to create and use Character, and Frame Styles.

Footer: A Footer is an area at the bottom of a page reserved for material that is not part of the regular document body text flow.

Header: A Header is an area at the top of a page reserved for material that is not part of the regular document body text flow.

All left side (or even numbered) pages in this Lesson 4 document have page numbers that are left justified, while all right side (or odd numbered) pages have page numbers that are right justified. This document has been designed to be printed on both sides of the paper, so the margins are different on left and right pages to accommodate binding. The page numbers will be on the outside edge of the pages as the reader leafs through the document.

The Lesson 4 document you are reading right now has one page appearance for the first page in the chapter, and different headers and footers for the following left and right pages. By creating special styles for left andright pages, the formatting for new pages is automatically taken care of by the system. If the author wants tochange the appearance of all pages in a document, she simply changes the page style definitions and the entire document is automatically updated with the new style.

Creating custom page styles will be introduced in this lesson. The Styles and Formatting Sidebar provides tools for controlling styles. Additional styles will be covered in later chapters.

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Illustration 32: Styles and Formatting sidebar features


Formatting page styles:Formatting page styles:

Documents that will be printed (as opposed to those that only appear on web pages or in e-books) will have margins of a specific size, and may include headers and footers. It is not unusual to have different formats for the first page in a document, or for left and right pages (when double-sided printing will be used). This section will review the options for controlling page styles and for creating new custom page styles.

✔ Open the file named My Lesson 1 Document.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, adjust the Save in: location to your preferred folder.

✔ Enter the name My Lesson 4 Document in the File Name text box and then select the Save button.

This creates a new document and if you check the Titlebar you will see the file name displayed. The originaldocument file will still be stored in the computer.

Next, we will copy and paste text so that we have at least 3 pages of text in the document.

✔ Place the text cursor somewhere in the document and press Ctrl+A to select all text.

✔ With all text selected select the Text Body paragraph style in the Text Formatting tool bar.

✔ Press Ctrl+End to move the cursor to the end of the text.

✔ Press the Enter key to add a new empty paragraph at the end of the text.

✔ Press Ctrl+A to select all text.

✔ Press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to the clipboard.

✔ With the text cursor on the last line of text. Press Ctrl+V to paste the text copy.

✔ Press Ctrl+V several more times until you see that there are 3 pages of text.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select the Save tool to update the My Lesson 4 document file.

Now that we have a multi page document towork with, we can create some custom pagestyles. We will create 3 different styles, a firstpage, and left and right pages. Refer to Illus-tration 2 for the parts of the display related topages.

✔ If the Styles and Formatting Sidebaris not open, from the Menu Bar,select Sidebar to open the Stylesand Formatting Sidebar. [You canalso press the F11 shortcut key on thekeyboard to toggle the Styles and Formatting Sidebar.]

✔ In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Page Styles tool. (See Illustration 2)

When you pause the mouse cursor over a tool icon, a Tool Tip will appear that will describe the tool function.

✔ If Custom Styles does not appear at the bottom of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the small arrow on the right side of the window and select it from the list.

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Illustration 33: Page number status

Formatting page styles:

To the right of the page number near the bottom of the display is the current Page Style. The example showsthat the Default page style is in use.

The Page Display tool allows for displaying a single page, two pages side by side, or book mode which shows left and right pages as they would appear when the pages are printed double sided for a book. In this example the single page view option is in use.

Near the lower right corner of the LibreOffice Writer display are the Zoom Tools. There is a tiny – on the left side of the slider to Zoom Out, a tiny + on the right end of the slider to Zoom In, and a slider zoom grabber near the center of the slider line. To the right of the zoom slider is a number that shows the current display magnification.

Note that display magnification, or zoom, only controls how big the document looks on the computer monitor. It does not have any effect on font size or how the document will look when it is printed.

Creating a left side page styleCreating a left side page style

✔ Select the Page Styles tool in the Styles and Formatting Sidebar.

✔ Select the small arrow at the lower right corner of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, then select Custom Styles from the scroll list.

There will not be any page styles shown in the listuntil some are created.

✔ Right click in an empty area of the Styles andFormatting Sidebar and select New fromthe pop up menu.

This will open the Page Style dialog box. Observethat there are tabs across the top of the dialog boxthat provide access to various style settings.

✔ With the Organizer tab selected in the PageStyle dialog box, enter My Left Pages asthe Name.

✔ Select the small arrow on the right side of the Next Style text box and select My LeftPages from the scroll list.

The Next Style tells the system what page style to use for the following page when the current page is filled with text. In a later step, this will be changed to My Right Pages after that style has been defined. But first, there is a bit more work to do with the left page style.

✔ With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.75 for the Right margins.

If you press the tab key when the text cursor is in an entry box, the system will jump to the next box and highlight the contents. You can then type a new value in the entry box and tab to the next.

✔ With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.5 for the Left, Top, and Bottommargins.

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Illustration 34: Page Style dialog box


✔ With the Header tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Header option ON.

✔ With the Footer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Footer option ON.

✔ Select OK in the Page Style dialog box. This defines a style for the left pages of the document. The process will be repeated for right and title pages. Since these formats are being designed for two sided printing, a larger space for the binding will be on the left side of the first and right pages, and on the right side of left side pages.

Creating a right side page styleCreating a right side page style

✔ Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu.

✔ With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter My Right Pages as the Name.

✔ Select the small arrow on the right side of the Next Style text box and select My Left Pages from the scroll list.

✔ With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.75 for the Left margins.

✔ With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.5 for the Right, Top, and Bottom margins.


✔ With the Footer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, toggle the Footer option ON.

✔ Select OK in the Page Style dialog box.

Creating a first page styleCreating a first page style

There is one more page style to create. This style will be used for the first page of the document and will include a header, and a footer.

✔ Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting Sidebar and select New from the pop up menu.

✔ With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter My First Page as the Name.

✔ Select the small arrow on the right side of the Next Style text box and select My Left Pages from the scroll list.

✔ With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.75 for the Left margins.

✔ With the Page tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, enter 0.5 for the Right, Top, and Bottom margins.


✔ Select OK in the Page Style dialog box. Observe that we did not add a footer for the first page.

Now we have to go back and change the Next Page setting for the left pages.

✔ In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, right click on My Left Pages and select Modify from the pop up context menu.

✔ With the Organizer tab selected in the Page Style dialog box, select the small arrow on the right side of the Next Style text box and select My Right Pages from the scroll list.

✔ Select OK in the Page Style dialog box.

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Creating a first page style

If everything has gone according to plan, you should now have 3 custom pages defined; My First Page, My Right Pages, and My Left Pages. The right and left pages should have both headers and footers, and the firstpage should have only a header.

One nice thing about defining page styles is that you can easily change the page styles for an entire docu-ment. For example, suppose you wanted different margins on pages. All you have to do is modify the page styles and the entire document will be instantly re-formatted.

Next, let's apply the page styles to the My Lesson 4 Document.

✔ Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the beginning of the document.

✔ Position the text cursor anywhere on page one.

✔ Double click on the My First Page entry in the Page Styles list.

✔ Select the Save button on the Galaxy Toolbar to update your document file.Your page should now have a header area at the top of the page. Observe that the bottom of the display shows both the current page number and also the name of the Page Style used for the current page.

Next, a title will be added to the header.

Defining headers and footers:Defining headers and footers:

Let's put some text in the headers and footers.

✔ Position the text cursor in the first page header.

✔ Enter My Lesson Four Title.✔ Position the text cursor in the header of the second page .

✔ Enter the text This is a left page header.✔ Position the text cursor in the header of the third page .

✔ Enter the text This is a right page header.

Inserting Fields:Inserting Fields:

Next, we will add page numbers to the footers.

✔ Adjust your display so that the page 2 footer is in view.

✔ Click the mouse cursor in the footer box.

✔ Type the word Page followed by a space.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Fields, Page Number.✔ Type a space followed by the word of followed by another space.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select Insert, Field, Page Count.Your footer contents should look similar to that shown in Illustration 4. Observe the page number and style for the page where the text cursor is located.

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Note that fields that are inserted will be shown with a gray background and cannot be edited. The gray background will not show in a printed copy.

✔ Select all of the text in the page 2 footer, then press Ctrl+C (or select Edit, Copy)

✔ Adjust your display so that the page 3 footer is in view.

✔ Click the mouse cursor in the page 3 footer box, then press Ctrl+V (or select Edit, Paste).

✔ Select the Save button on the Galaxy Toolbar to update your document file.Now it's time to review the process of creating custom Paragraph Styles and create styles for the title, body,headers and footers.

Creating a custom Title paragraph style:Creating a custom Title paragraph style:

✔ From the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, select the Paragraph Style tool.


✔ In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Title Paragraph.

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Title Paragraph.




✔ Set the Alignment to Center.✔ Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Times New Roman, Bold, 20pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)

✔ Select the Font Effects tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and select the Shadow effect.

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Illustration 35: A left page footer

Creating a custom Title paragraph style:

✔ Select the Area tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, select the Fill Color option, and then select the Pale Yellow color.

✔ Select the Borders tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box, and select the Set Top and Bottom borders option.

✔ Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box.Now let's apply the paragraph style to the title header.

✔ Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the top of the document.

✔ Place the text cursor anywhere in the first page header.

✔ Double click on the My Title Paragraph style in the Styles and Formatting Sidebar.

Now that we have a classy title header, wewill create styles for the text body and foot-ers.

Creating a custom Text BodyCreating a custom Text Bodyparagraph style:paragraph style:

✔ From the Styles and FormattingSidebar, select the Paragraph Styletool.

✔ Right click in an empty area of the Styles and Formatting dialog boxand select New from the pop upmenu.

✔ With the Organizer tab selected, in theName area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Text Body Paragraph.

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Text Body Paragraph.



✔ Select the Indents & Spacing tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Set the First Line spacing to 0.50.

✔ Set the spacing Below paragraphs to 0.10.


✔ Set the Alignment to Left.✔ Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Times New Roman, Regular, 14pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer. A smaller font may notcause text to spill onto 3 pages.)

✔ Select the OK button to close the Paragraph Style dialog box.

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Illustration 36: Creating a title header paragraph style


✔ Place the text cursor in the body of a page.

✔ Press Ctrl+A to select all of the text.

✔ Double click on the My Text Body Paragraph style.Use the scroll bar on the right side of the page and observe that the text in the entire document is now using the My Text Body Paragraph style. The beauty of this is that you can now change the font and spacing of theentire document simply by modifying the paragraph style. This is powerful stuff. While we are at it, we might as well create paragraph styles of the headers and footers.

Creating custom Header paragraph styles:Creating custom Header paragraph styles:

✔ From the Styles and Formatting Sidebar, Toolbar, select the Paragraph Style tool.


✔ In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Left Header Paragraph.

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Left Header Paragraph.





✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Arial, Bold, 10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)



✔ Place the text cursor in the page 2 header.

✔ Double click on the My Left Header Paragraph style.Next, the right header style will be created.



✔ In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Right Header Paragraph.

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Right Header Paragraph.




✔ Set the Alignment to Right.✔ Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

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Creating custom Header paragraph styles:

✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Arial, Bold, 10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)



✔ Place the text cursor in the page 3 header.

✔ Double click on the My Right Header Paragraph style.

Creating custom Footer paragraph styles:Creating custom Footer paragraph styles:



✔ In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Left Footer Paragraph.

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Left Footer Paragraph.


✔ Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made.



✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Arial, Regular, 10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)


✔ Place the text cursor in the page 2 footer.

✔ Double click on the My Left Footer Paragraph style.

Last, the right footer will be created.



✔ In the Name area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, enter the name My Right Footer Paragraph.

✔ In the Next Style area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, also enter My Right Footer Paragraph.

✔ In the Inherit from area of the Paragraph Style dialog box, use the small arrow on the right side of the text box and select My Right Footer Paragraph.

✔ Do not select the OK button in the dialog box until all desired settings are made.


✔ Set the Alignment to Right.✔ Select the Font tab in the Paragraph Style dialog box.

✔ Select a Font, Typeface and Size for the title. (In this example, Arial, Regular, 10.5pt was used. However, you may choose any font you prefer.)


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✔ Place the text cursor in the page 3 footer.

✔ Double click on the My Right Footer Paragraph style.

✔ Save the document.This was a lot of busy work, but you never have to do it again.

Whenever you want to start a new multi-page document, start by opening your Lesson 4 Document, use File Save As to create a new document, then edit the text body and title. The paragraph and page formatting will be all taken care of.

Points to remember:➢ Use the Styles and Formatting Sidebar to select or modify the styles of Paragraphs,

Characters, Frames, Pages, and Lists.➢ Each page will be followed by a page that has a style defined as Next Page in the Page Style

Organizer dialog box. ➢ A page may, or may not, have either a Header or a Footer.➢ Fields can be inserted that contain page numbers or a page count. Fields are also available

for Time, Date, and other functions.

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Illustration 37: Lesson 4 document in Book View

Lesson 5 – Styles, Tables, and FramesLesson 5 – Styles, Tables, and Frames

In this lesson you will learn how to create a new document that imports the custom page and paragraph styles created in earlier lessons. You will also see how to add tables to your documents.

✔ If LibreOffice Writer is not running, open it. If it is already running close any open documents using File, Close, and then Open a New document.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File, Save As, and set the Save In folder to a known location. EnterLesson 5 Class News as the file name.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select File, Properties.

✔ With the Description tab selected, enter Lesson 5 Class News as the Title.

Importing custom styles:Importing custom styles:

Next, the custom formats will be imported from the My Lesson 4 Document file.

✔ Open the Styles and Formatting dialog box. [Press F11 or Select Format, Styles and Formatting from the Menu Bar.]

✔ In the Styles and Formatting dialog box, select the New Style from Selection tool, then selectLoad Styles from the pop up menu.

Observe that the Load Styles dialog box pro-vides options for loading styles from Tem-plates. You can create different templates andstore them for future use. There are also stan-dard templates available on the www.libreoffice.org web site. Rather thanusing a template in this example, you willload styles from your Lesson 4 document.

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Illustration 38: Imported Styles

Illustration 39: Load Styles dialog box

http://www.libreoffice.org/


✔ Make sure that the following options along the bottom of the Load Styles dialog box, Text, Frame, Pages, Numbering, and Overwrite, are all selected.

✔ Select the From File button, select your My Lesson 4 Document file, and then select the Open button.

This procedure will import the custom styles and formats from the My Lesson 4 Document file and make them part of the Class News file. At this point the Styles and Formatting custom paragraph styles should show the Custom Styles from your earlier document as seen in Illustration 1.

If you think about this for a minute, you will realize that a word processing document file contains more than just words. It also contains background information about style settings and other mysterious stuff.

Now that your custom styles are available, they can be used in the new document.

✔ With the text cursor in the body of the Class News document, and with the Page Styles tool selected in the Styles and Formatting dialog box, double click on the My First Page format.

✔ Place the text cursor in the first page header, delete any existing text, then from the Menu Bar select Insert, Field Title.

The preceding step inserted the title from the document Properties that was set earlier in this lesson.

Inserting and editing date fields:Inserting and editing date fields:

✔ On the first line of the text body of the Class News document type thefollowing words (but do not press theenter key). Class News for [space]

The current date will be added by inserting adate field.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select Insert,Field, Date.

This will insert the current date in place ofthe word date.

Note that the date is shaded. This is toremind you that it is an inserted filed,not regular text. The shading will notappear when the document is printed.

It is possible to change the format of the date,and to make it a fixed date, or have it changeevery time this document is opened andsaved.

✔ Double click on the date.This opens the Edit Fields dialog box as shown in Illustration 3.

Observe that either a fixed date or the current date can be set. Also, there are a variety of date formats to choose from.

✔ Select your date preferences from the Edit Fields dialog box and then select OK.

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Illustration 40: Changing date format

Using standard paragraph styles:

Using standard paragraph styles:Using standard paragraph styles:

You imported Paragraph Styles from the Lesson 4 document, but no style was created for headings. In this example, one of the LibreOffice standard paragraph styles will be used.

✔ With the text cursor in the date paragraph, use the pop down list from the Paragraph Style area ofthe Text Formatting Toolbar to select the Heading 1 style.

✔ Move the cursor to the end of the date paragraph and press the Enter key to add a new blank paragraph.

✔ With the text cursor in the blank paragraph, double click on the My Text Body Paragraph stylein the Styles and Formatting Window.

Some text paragraphs will now be added to the Class News document.

✔ Enter the following paragraphs in the Class News document.

Welcome to the latest edition of LibreOffice Writer Class News. This edition has already helped you see how to import custom page and paragraph formats from other documents. Custom formats can save a lot of time when you are creating different documents that share the same styles.

In this edition you have learned how to insert a date field into a document. You can also change between a fixed date or the current date.

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Illustration 41: Selecting a paragraph style


An Introduction to Word Processing class will be offered soon. The date and time for the classwill be posted on the bulletin board. Following is a tentative listing of topics to be covered.

Introduction to Word Processing

✔ Press the Enter key several times to add some blank paragraphs.

✔ In the Styles and Formatting Sidebar select the small arrow on the bottom right corner of the boxand then select Chapter Styles from the pop up context menu.

✔ Place the text cursor in the Introduction to Word Processing paragraph.

✔ Double click on the Title paragraph style.

✔ Set the Styles and Formatting dialog box back to Custom Styles.

✔ Position the text cursor in the paragraph below the Introduction to Word Processing paragraph.

Adding tables:Adding tables:

Next, a table will be inserted into the document.

Tables are very useful when you want to align sections of text horizontally and vertically. On an old type-writer this was done using tabs and spaces. The problem is that if you use spaces and tabs to align things in word processing, and then change the font size or style, everything will have to be realigned. A table takes all the work out of the alignment process. Tables in LibreOffice Writer have many features similar to spreadsheet programs.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select Table, Insert Table.

✔ In the Insert Table dialog box (see Illustration 6) enter Schedule as the Name.

✔ Enter 2 columns and 3 Rows.

✔ Toggle the Heading option ON, then select Insert.

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Illustration 42: Using a standard paragraph chapter style

Illustration 43: Inserting atable

Adding tables:

Your table should now look similar to Illustration 7 (except that your table will not yet be filled out).

There are several points to note when filling out tables.

✔ Place the cursor in the first cell of the table and type Session, but do not press the enter key.

Pressing the enter key will add another paragraph to a cell. It is not wrong to have multiple paragraphs in a table cell, but most of the time cells hold a single paragraph.

✔ Press the TAB key to move to the next cell in the table.

If you press the TAB key with the text cursor in the very last table cell, the system will automatically add a new row of cells to the table. You can also use the cursor control arrow keys to move between cells in a table.

When the text cursor is in a table cell, the Table Tools Tool Bar will open.

There is a lot more to tables than can be covered here, but if you pause the cursor on the different tools of the Table Toolbar you will get an idea of the different functions available.

✔ Fill your table with information similar to that shown in Illustration 6. (Remember to press the TAB key after each cell entry.)

Paragraphs in table cells have a default paragraph style. You can, of course, create your own special para-graph styles for table contents.

Observe in the example shown in Illustration 7 that the first cell in the Topic column has a paragraph that does not fit into one line in the cell. The system automatically uses word wrap to increase the row height as

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Illustration 44: Adding a table


needed. The Session column is much wider than required. There is an easy way to adjust table column widths.

✔ Move the cursor over the vertical linebetween the columns in the table andwatch the cursor change to a doublearrow. (See Illustration 8.)

✔ When the cursor changes to a doublearrow, drag the vertical line to changethe cell widths.

✔ To get complete control of tablecharacteristics, first position thecursor somewhere in the table, andthen from the Menu Bar select Table, Table Properties

This will open the Table Format dialog boxthat provides control over all table parame-ters.

If you want to make the table width smaller than the page width, use the Table Properties dialog box to change the Alignment option to Left or Center, and then enter a new Width dimension.

✔ In the Table Tool Bar, hover the mouse cursor over the tools and review the various options.

✔ Select the Table Properties tool and then review all of the tabs. When you are through, select OK.

Tables can enhance your documents and take the pain out of aligning rows and columns. Tables in LibreOffice Writer can also include many functions found in spreadsheet software.

The example below was created directly in this LibreOffice Writer document. It uses date and currency for-mats (accessed through Table, Number Format from the Menu Bar), and also uses formulas to calculate totals and the sum of the last column. Good bye calculator!

Item Purchase Date Cost per Item Qty Total Cost

Book December 5, 2012 $21.50 2 $43.00

Paper November 3, 2012 $6.95 6 $41.70

Binders November 3, 2012 $2.95 3 $8.85

Total $93.55

Tables or columns?Tables or columns?

Some beginners make the mistake of trying to use page columns to imitate tables. The problem with this is that they have to keep messing with adding and deleting empty paragraphs to keep things aligned between

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Illustration 45: Changing column width

Tables or columns?

adjacent columns. Columns are designed to have the text flow from one column to another. They are some-times used to improve readability since people can have trouble tracking text from one end of a line to the next on very wide columns. The use of columns can also improve reading speeds for many people since the eyes can track faster vertically rather than having to track both horizontally and vertically. However, col-umns should never be substituted for tables.

Inserting Frames:Inserting Frames:

The next LibreOffice Writer feature that will beexplained is frames.

Frames are like little documents in a box that areinserted into a main document. Frames can containthe same kinds of things the main document contains,however, the main document body text flows aroundframes. They are sometimes used as sidebars to pro-vide separate but related text or illustrations.

Frames can contain text, graphic images, or tables.Frames are typically Anchored to a paragraph in themain document. They can float with a paragraph. That means that if the text before a frame is edited, and this causes the paragraph to move, the anchored frame will move with it. The Wrap function can be used to control how text flows around a frame.

✔ Enter the following paragraphs after the table in the Class News document.

Frames added to list of useful tools.

Frames are like little documents that are inserted into a main document. They can contain thesame things the main document contains. They are sometimes used as side-bars to provide separate but related text.

Frames can also contain graphics images or tables. Frames are typically anchored to a para-graph in the main document. They float with the paragraph. That means that if the text before a frame is edited, and this causes the anchor paragraph to move, the frame will move with it. The wrap function can be used to make text flow around a frame.

✔ Place the text cursor in the Frames added to list of useful tools paragraph, then set the Paragraph Style to Heading 1.

Next, a frame will be added to the document.

✔ Place the text cursor in the Frames added to list of useful tools paragraph, then from the Menu Bar, select Insert, Frame, Frame.

This opens the Frame dialog box. The Type tab of the dialog box provides for setting the width , height, andposition of the frame.

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Wrap: When a frame or graphic object isembedded in a document a Wrap prop-erty determines how the text and object interact. The graphic object associ-ated with this paragraph hasthe Wrap property set to havethe image repel the text.

This frame has one paragraph of text with aborder, and a second paragraph with these cap-

tion words.


✔ In the Frame-Type dialog box, set the Width to 2.50, the Height to 1.5, the Anchor to To paragraph, the Horizontal position to Right, to Paragraph area, and the Verticalposition to Top to Paragraph textarea.

✔ With the Wrap tab selected in the Frame dialog box, set the Wrap to Before.

✔ With the frame selected, set the Sidebar option to Properties.

✔ In the Area section (select the + toopen it if necessary) set Fill to Colorand change the color to LightYellow.

The results of your frame design should look similar to Illustration 10.

✔ To add text to a frame, place the text cursor inside the frame and enter the following text.

This text is inside a frame. Text in a frame can use any paragraph style.

A frame can also contain a graphic image.

To stop adding text to a frame, click the text cursor outside of the frame.

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Illustration 46: The Frame dialog box

Illustration 47: Setting the frame Properties.

Inserting Frames:

Observe that the default paragraph style for frames is Frame contents. However, any paragraph style can beassigned to paragraphs in frames.

If you click the cursor on a frame border, the frame will be selected and grab points will be added to the cor-ners and mid points of the frame. By dragging these grab points you can move or resize a frame. When a frame is selected, the Sidebar Properties can be used to make and modifications to the frame.

✔ When you are through modifying your Class News document, Save the file.

Points to remember:➢ Page, paragraph and other styles can be imported into a new document from existing

documents.➢ Tables provide an easy way to format rows and columns of entries.➢ Tables in LibreOffice Writer provide a number of functions found in spreadsheet software

including formatting cells to display currency or dates and inserting calculation formulas in cells.

➢ Columns should never be used in documents where side by side alignment of text is required. Tables are preferred over columns for this application.

➢ Frames can be inserted into the body of a document and can contain their own text or graphics.

➢ Frames can be set to make the body text wrap around the frame.➢ Frames can have border lines, area fills, and shadows.

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Lesson 6 – Adding GraphicsLesson 6 – Adding Graphics

Inserting Graphics:Inserting Graphics:

Graphics files (pictures, drawings, and other images) can be inserted into documents, or into frames within documents. They can either be embedded or linked. It is not possible to tell the difference between embed-ded and linked graphics by simply looking at a document.

Embedded graphics become an integral part of the document and increase the size of the file.

Linked graphics are not added directly to a document. Instead, the document contains a pointer, or file address, that the system uses to fetch the file whenever it is needed.

An advantage of linked files is that if the original graphic is changed, the document will automatically include the changed graphic. Also, by embedding graphics, the document size is smaller than it would be if the graphic was embedded.

A disadvantage of linked graphics is that if the document is moved from one computer to another, the linkedfiles must also be moved. The trick to solving this problem is to create a special folder for the document with a graphics sub-folder. If the document folder is copied to a different computer, the linked files folder will follow along. Embedded files can make an authors life simpler.

✔ If your Lesson 5 Class News document is not on the display, Open it.

✔ Select File, Save As and enter the name Lesson 6 Class News.

✔ Select File, Properties, Description and edit the Title to Class News Lesson 6.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select Tools, Update, Update All.The last step should have updated the title of the document in the header.

The process of saving a document file with a new name is a good trick to keep in mind. There will be many times when you want to create a new variation of a document while preserving the original version. Also, all of your Custom paragraphs and pages will be in the new file.

✔ Insert the following paragraphs at the end of the Lesson 6 Class News document.

Graphics can enhance documents.

Including graphic images in documents can improve the appearance and clarity of the docu-ment text message. Most people believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. Many times a picture can improve the reader's understanding of the document content.

Graphic images that are inserted in a document can be anchored to a paragraph, or can be anchored to the page itself. Images anchored to a paragraph will float with the paragraph, or follow the location of the paragraph when editing changes the location of the paragraph withina document. However, there may be times when it is desirable to have a graphic image main-tain a constant location on a page.

✔ Place the text cursor in the Graphics can enhance documents paragraph, then set the Paragraph Style to Heading 1.

✔ Place the text cursor somewhere in the last paragraph and from the Menu Bar select Insert, Image.

This will open the Insert picture dialog box. This dialog box is similar to the File Open dialog box. You change the directory path to select the folder where the desired file is located.

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Near the bottom center of the Insert picture dialog box is a Link toggle box. If there is a check mark in this box, the graphic file will be linked. If it is not checked, the graphic will be embedded in the document.

Any picture can be substituted in the next step. Different versions of Windows usually have one or more sample pictures in the My Pictures, Sample Pictures folder. Nearly all Windows computers have some graphics files that are used for desktop wallpaper.

✔ Adjust the Directory Path to show thefolder containing your desired picture(in this example the This PC,Pictures, MS Desktop Pictures folderwas used), then select a picture file.

✔ Select the desired graphic file in theInsert picture dialog box and select Open.

Once a graphic is inserted you have to decidehow and where it should appear. If you haveinserted a large picture, you should re-size itfor this exercise.

✔ Left click on the picture to select it.

When a picture is selected, grab points will appear at the corners and mid points of the picture edge. These grab points can be used to re-size the picture.

Shift-drag: If you re-size a picture by dragging a grab point, you can distort the picture by changing its aspect ratio (the relative height and width) of the picture. If you hold down the Shiftkey while you are moving a grab point, the aspect ratio will remain constant.

When a picture is selected and you move the cursor into the picture area, the cursor will change to a four way arrow. When the four way arrow cursor is active, you can drag the pictureto a new location.

✔ Select the picture andthen select Properties from the Sidebar.

The Properties Sidebar pro-vides a number of tools forcontrolling the size and place-ment of images.

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Illustration 48: The Insert Image dialog box.

Illustration 49: Modifying image properties

Inserting Graphics:

✔ Use the Position and Size section of the Properties Sidebar and toggle the Keep Ratio option ON.

✔ Change the Width of the Image to 1.50.

✔ With the image selected, from the Graphics Formatting Tool Bar select the Align Right tool.

✔ Use the Graphics Formatting Tool Bar to add aborder to the image.

For even more graphics image options you can use the Image dialog box that opens when you double click on animage.

✔ Double click on your image.

✔ Select the Type TAB in the Image dialog box andobserve the options.

✔ Select the Borders TAB in the Image dialog box andselect the Set all four borders option.

✔ Set the Spacing to Contents to 0.10 for all 4 sides.

✔ Select the Area TAB in the Image dialog box, set the Fill to Color, and select a fill color (Tango: Sky Blue 2 was used in the example.)

Illustration 4 shows a screen capture from the Class News document after a picture has been inserted. The grab points at the corners and mid points of the picture show that the picture is selected. This example has the Wrap set to Before and the alignment to Right.

Pictures are similar to frames in that they can have borders and shadows. Pictures can also have captions. Captions are added by right clicking on a picture and selecting the Caption option.

Observe that when an anchored or wrapped picture is selected, the anchor point will be shown by a little anchor icon. Don't forget that you can move a picture by selecting the picture and then dragging it to a new location.

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Illustration 50: The Image dialog box

Illustration 51: Lesson 6 example


Inserting drawn graphicsInserting drawn graphics

LibreOffice Writer includes a set of drawing tools that can be used to enhance your documents without hav-ing to buy, and learn how to use, a paint program. A complete book could be written about the LibreOffice Writer drawing functions, In this exercise, a brief sample will be provided.

✔ Use Ctrl+End to position the text cursor at the end of your document.

✔ Press the Enter key a couple of times to add some blank lines at the end of the text.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select View, Toolbars, and toggle the Drawing toolbar ON.The Drawing toolbar should appear along the bottom of the display.

There are far too many drawing tools to discuss here. Observe that some of the tools have a little arrow on the right side of the tool icon. If you click on these arrows, additional drawing tools will appear. If you hover the mouse cursor over a tool, a tool tip will pop up and give a hint of what the tool does.

✔ Position the cursor over the Symbol Shapes tool and then click the arrow to expand the tool and select the Smiley Face tool.

Click and Drag means to position the cursor where you would like the upper left corner of the graphic, hold the left mouse button down, and then move the mouse. When the graphic is thesize you want, release the left mouse button.

✔ With the Smiley Face tool selected, move the cursor to an empty area of your document and Click and Drag a smiley face.

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Illustration 52: The Drawing Toolbar

Illustration 53: The Drawing Formatting Tool Bar

Inserting drawn graphics

When a graphic is selected, the Drawing Formatting Toolbar will appear below the normal Galaxy Toolbar as shown in Illustration 6. Take a minute to move the cursor over the drawing format tools to see their tool tip.

✔ Use the Drawing Formatting Toolbar tool to change the smiley face fill color to yellow.

✔ Drag the smiley face to a location near the center of the page.

✔ Select the smiley face and select Optimal Page Wrap from the Drawing Formatting Toolbar.When you add text, the text will wrap itself around the smiley face graphic. But first, let's have a little more fun.

✔ From the Drawing tool bar, select the Cloud tool from the Callouts tools options.

✔ Drag a Cloud Callout graphic and position it as shown in Illustration 7.

✔ Select the cloud graphic and select Optimal Page Wrap from the Drawing Formatting Toolbar.

✔ Double click on the Cloud Callout and enter some text.

✔ Click in the page and enter the following text.

LibreOffice Writer includes a set of drawing tools that can be used to enhance your docu-ments without having to buy, and learn how to use, a paint program. A complete book could be written about the LibreOffice Writer drawing functions, In this exercise, a brief sample will be provided.

✔ Copy and paste the text several times to provide example text to demonstrate the Wrap function.

Illustration 7 shows a pagewith graphics and wrappedtext.

Double clicking in adrawing object allows youto enter text into the textinto the graphics object.

✔ Save your Lesson 6Class News document.

✔ Press Ctrl+End tojump to the end ofyour document.

✔ Press Ctrl + Enter keyto force a page break.

The Ctrl+Enter trickforces a page break and places the text cursor at the top of a new page.

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Illustration 54: Wrapping text around graphics images


See Illustration 8 for examples of the following steps.

✔ Try creating an ellipse and then changing the fill color to a gradient fill.

✔ Create a circle, add a texture fill, and double click and add text.

✔ Try a bitmap or hatching fill pattern.

✔ Experiment with mixing text and graphics. (Hint, double click on a filled graphic, such as a rectangle, and add text.)

✔ Hover the cursor over the different drawing tools to get an idea of what they do. Click on the small arrows near the different tools to reveal more drawing shape options.

✔ Select a graphic object on your page, and then explore the different Drawing Format Toolbar options.

✔ Have fun!

The drawing tools used inLibreOffice Writer are sharedby the LibreOffice Drawingprogram that is part of theLibreOffice suite. However,LibreOffice Drawing includesadditional 3D drawingoptions. If you want to createa quick sign or other graphicsintensive documents, considerLibreOffice Drawing ratherthan LibreOffice Writer.

Points to remember:Points to remember:

➢ Graphics can eitherbe embedded orlinked.

➢ Embedded graphicsbecome part of thedocument and willincrease thedocument file size.

➢ Linked graphics donot increase the filesize. Also, if a linkedgraphic is changed,the next time thedocument is printedit will use the latest version of the graphic. However, if a document file is moved, the linked graphics may be lost.

➢ Graphic images can be set to have the text wrap around the image.➢ Graphic shapes can be filled with solid colors, gradient (shaded) fills, bitmaps, or hatching.

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Illustration 55: Sample drawing objects

Appendix A – LibreOffice Writer SettingsAppendix A – LibreOffice Writer Settings

This section describes how to make your LibreOffice Writer displays look similar to the illustrations in the Tutorials. LibreOffice is available on different operating system including Windows, Mac, and Linux. LibreOffice provides users a number of different options for personalizing the display, so it may look slightly different on different computers.

The tutorials found in this collection of documents were created using LibreOffice 5.2 on a computer run-ning Windows 10. Follow the steps below if you would like to adjust your system display to look similar to the illustrations in the tutorials in this collection.

Setting the Toolbar StyleSetting the Toolbar Style

✔ From the Menu Bar, select Tools,Options, View.

This opens the View options dialog box asshown in Illustration 1.

✔ Set the Icon size to Large and the Icon style to Galaxy.

✔ In the Font Lists area, toggle Showpreview of fonts ON.

Add the Drawing ToolbarAdd the Drawing Toolbar

Some tutorial lessons in this series will callfor adding graphics to documents. The Drawing toolbar makes it easier to addgraphics to documents.

The View, Toolbars options are toggles.Each time an option is selected, the optionchanges between on and off. When acheck mark appears beside an option, theoption is toggled on.

✔ From the Menu Bar, select View,Toolbars, Drawing.to toggle the Drawing Menu on. (See Illustration 2)

The Drawing Toolbar should appear along thebottom of the display (See Illustration 3).

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Illustration 56: Setting the Galaxy tool style

Illustration 57: Drawing Toolbar toggle


The Styles and Formatting SidebarThe Styles and Formatting Sidebar

The Styles and Formatting Sidebar is an area on the right side of the display. It has a variety of tools that are used to adjust the properties of objects in a document.

✔ If the Styles and Formatting Sidebar is not visible, From the Menu Bar select View, and toggle the Sidebar on. (See Illustration 2.)

The Sidebar can be opened or closed by selecting the Hide tool on the left edge of the Sidebar.

This completes the LibreOffice display options setup process. The settings shown here are used in the tuto-rial lessons. As you gain experience with LibreOffice, you will want to customize your settings to accom-modate the type of documents you are creating.

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Illustration 58: The Drawing Toolbar, and Styles Sidebar