OpenOffice.org contains many useful features designed to simplify your office tasks. One of those features is the quick and easy drawing of text tables.

Imagine you write a text and need a table with three columns, the first column narrow, the other two wide. You can start drawing that table without the need to reach for the mouse, search that icon, or drag the borders between the columns. Just enter a line like this:

+------+-----------------------+-------------------------+

The very moment that you press Enter at the end of this line, it gets converted into a table, where the plus characters are turned into vertical borders.

(Note that the html format has its own mind where the column borders should be. In Writer they are where you placed the plus characters.)

If that conversion doesn't happen, you might have disabled this feature in the past. Enable "Create table" in Tools - AutoCorrect - Options. Check that Format - AutoFormat - While Typing is enabled, too.

Start the initial line with some space characters to create a table that begins at some distance from the page margin.

While you are in the Tools - AutoCorrect - Options dialog, click the Help button to see what else is available that can automatically change your text.

All page properties for Writer text documents, for example the page orientation, are defined by page styles. By default, a new Writer text document uses the Default page style for all pages. If you open an existing text document, different page styles may have been applied to the different pages.

It is important to know that changes that you apply to a page property will only affect the pages that use the current page style. The current page style is listed in the Status Bar at the lower window border.

To change the page orientation for all pages

If your text document consists only of pages with the same page style, you can change the page properties directly:

1. Choose Format - Page.

2. Click the Page tab.

3. Under Paper format, select Portrait or Landscape.

4. Click OK.

To change the page orientation only for some pages

OpenOffice.org uses page styles to specify the orientation of the pages in a document. Page styles define more page properties, as for example header and footer or page margins. You can either change the Default page style for the current document, or you can define own page styles and apply those page styles to any parts of your text.

At the end of this help page, we'll discuss the scope of page styles in detail. If you are unsure about the page style concept, please read the section at the end of this page.

Note: Unlike character styles or paragraph styles, the page styles don't know a hierarchy. You can create a new page style based on the properties of an existing page style, but when you later change the source style, the new page style does not automatically inherit the changes.

To change the page orientation for all pages that share the same page style, you first need a page style, then apply that style:

1. Choose Format - Styles and Formatting.

2. Click the Page Styles icon.

3. Right-click a page style and choose New. The new page style initially gets all properties of the selected page style.

4. On the Organizer tab page, type a name for the page style in the Name box, for example "My Landscape".

5. In the Next Style box, select the page style that you want to apply to the next page that follows a page with the new style. See the section about the scope of page styles at the end of this help page.

6. Click the Page tab.

7. Under Paper format, select Portrait or Landscape.

8. Click OK.

Now you have defined a proper page style with the name "My Landscape". To apply the new style, double-click the "My Landscape" page style in the Styles and Formatting window. All pages in the current scope of page styles will be changed. If you defined the "next style" to be a different style, only the first page of the current scope of page styles will be changed.

The scope of page styles

You should be aware of the scope of page styles in OpenOffice.org. Which pages of your text document get affected by editing a page style?

One page long styles

A page style can be defined to span one page only. The First Page style is an example. You set this property by defining another page style to be the "next style", on the Format - Page - Organizer tab page.

A one page long style starts from the lower border of the current page style range up to the next page break. The next page break appears automatically when the text flows to the next page, which is sometimes called a "soft page break". Alternatively, you can insert a manual page break.

• To insert a manual page break at the cursor position, press Ctrl+Enter or choose Insert - Manual Break and just click OK.

Manually defined range of a page style

The Default page style does not set a different "next style" on the Format - Page - Organizer tab page. Instead, the "next style" is set also to be Default. All page styles that are followed by the same page style can span multiple pages. The lower and upper borders of the page style range are defined by "page breaks with style". All the pages between any two "page breaks with style" use the same page style.

You can insert a "page break with style" directly at the cursor position. Alternatively, you can apply the "page break with style" property to a paragraph or to a paragraph style.

Perform any one of the following commands:

• To insert a "page break with style" at the cursor position, choose Insert - Manual Break, select a Style name from the listbox, and click OK.

• To apply the "page break with style" property to the current paragraph, choose Format - Paragraph - Text Flow. In the Breaks area, activate Enable and With Page Style. Select a page style name from the listbox.

• To apply the "page break with style" property to the current paragraph style, right-click the current paragraph. Choose Edit Paragraph Style from the context menu. Click the Text Flow tab. In the Breaks area, activate Enable and With Page Style. Select a page style name from the listbox.

• To apply the "page break with style" property to an arbitrary paragraph style, choose Format - Styles and Formatting. Click the Paragraph Styles icon. Right-click the name of the paragraph style you want to modify and choose Modify. Click the Text Flow tab. In the Breaks area, activate Enable and With Page Style. Select a page style name from the listbox.

Sometimes you want to place some text in your Writer document at a position out of normal margins and text lines. In Writer, you use either a graphical text box from the Drawing toolbar, or you use a text frame.

Text box

1. Click the Show Draw Functions icon on the Standard toolbar. This opens the Drawing toolbar at the bottom of the Writer window.

2. Click the T (Text box) icon.

3. Drag open a rectangle where you want the text box.

4. Start to enter your text.

Your text in the text box can be formatted like normal text. Pictures are not allowed inside a text box.

Text frame

1. Choose Insert - Frame. On the dialog, click OK.

2. You see a small standard frame centered between the left and right margins. While it shows the eight green handles, you can move and resize this frame. And you can set the properties for the frame as an object.

3. Click outside the frame to leave the selected object, then click inside the frame to enter text or insert pictures.

 Alternatively, first select the text that you want to see inside a frame, then choose Insert - Frame.

Linked frames

When you create a newsletter, you may want to use linked frames for your story. On page 1 of the newsletter, the text starts with a header and a first chapter, and on page 2 or 3 there is another frame with the remaining text.

1. Create the frames in your document.

2. Click the border of the first frame to select this frame. You see the Frames toolbar.

3. Click the Link frames icon.

4. Now click the next frame to connect the two frames.

Text will flow from the first frame to the second as needed. Only the last frame of a chain of linked frames resizes with the text, all other frames keep their size.

Text boxes and text frames can have borders or no borders, as you like. Open the object's context menu and set the properties. All these text boxes and frames export very well to PDF. When you save your document as html format, you may want to fine-tune the result. And first save the document in OpenDocument ODF format, because you will always lose some formatting when you save to other formats.

Using OpenOffice.org to write your MediaWiki articles

Did you know that there is an export filter for OpenOffice that you can use to convert your Writer documents to MediaWiki text?

The filter is an XSLT that converts your document from ODT to plain text with MediaWiki markup. It works best if you use styles properly throughout your document.

1. Download and save this file (right-click and Save As):

   http://www.openoffice.org/nonav/issues/showattachment.cgi/45498/odt2wiki.xslt

2. Start OpenOffice.org

3. Select Tools > XML Filter Settings

4. Click the New button and in the General tab, fill in the form as shown:

5. Click the Transformation tab.

6. Click the Browse button for the XSLT for export .

7. Browse to where you saved the XSLT in step 1. Click Open . You should see something similar to this:

8. Click OK , and then Close the XML Filter Settings window.

Now you can use the export filter to save your ODF files as MediaWiki formatted text. To export, all you need to do is:

• Open your Writer document (or create a new one)

• Click File > Export , and select ODT2Wiki from the File format drop down box.

• Give it a filename (and a location) and click Export .

The output will be a plain text file with MediaWiki markup. You can simply paste the text direct into the MediaWiki edit box.

There are a few things that you should be aware of.

• Images do not convert. You will have to add them to the Wiki page separately.

• Long documents (for example documents over 25 pages) do not convert well. Although, depending on your computer, you may have some success with longer documents, I recommend converting long documents in smaller chunks.

• Documents with complicated layouts may not convert perfectly, especially if you have complex tables or complex lists. Make sure you double check the results in the Wiki.

This XSLT filter is also documented on the OpenOffice Wiki at: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Odt2Wiki

Background

Conditional text can be very useful when working on documents that are to be published to multiple audiences.

For example, you could create a letter template that contains different text depending on the language or recipient country.
In OpenOffice.org, you can relate the visibility of sections to certain conditions.

Example

You are running WorldWide Conditions Inc, a small but exquisite start-up that has just opened an office in Germany to expand to the old European market. You would like to use one template for both countries letters, but the US and German offices use different letter heads.

This example neglects the fact that the US and Germany use different paper formats, too. These cannot be conditionally set on a document. Well actually, they could with a little macro logic, but this is beyond the scope of this posting and may be a topic for a later one.

You can create a template that contains both versions and switch the versions by specifying the language of the letter being either EN (for English) or DE (for Deutsch). Here is how:

Note: This is my first attempt with wink and flash animations. It's far from being as nice and nifty as the stuff our media design gurus are able to produce. So bear with me.

You can customize the OOo user interface in many ways. In today's tip you see how to add a word count icon to the main Writer toolbar.

1. Click the Down Arrow icon at the far right of the Formatting toolbar.

2. In the icon's menu, choose Customize Toolbar.

3. Click Add.

   You see the Add Commands dialog.

4. In the left list click Options, then in the right list scroll down and click Word Count.

5. Click Add, then click Close.

   Now you already see the new command as a text entry on the toolbar. You can select the new command and click the Up and Down buttons to change the position on the toolbar.

To assign an icon to the new command, select the new command, then click Modify and choose Change Icon.

Writing vertical text

Choose from several options to write your Writer text in vertical direction:

1. using a (graphical) text box and rotating the text box by 90 degrees

2. using a vertical text box (available when Asian language support is enabled)

3. using Fontwork

4. using a frame with vertical text direction (Asian language support enabled)

5. using a very narrow text box

Comments:

1 - to get a text box, click Show Draw Functions on the Standard toolbar. This enables the Drawing toolbar at the bottom of your window. Click the "T" icon for a text box, then drag in the document and start writing your text. When ready, click outside the text box, then click the text again. Now you see the normal green object handles. Right-click the object, choose Position and Size command, tab page Rotation.

2 - If you often need text rotated by 270 degrees, you can enable Asian language support. Use the command Tools - Options - Language Settings - Languages. Now you find a rotated "T" icon on the Drawing toolbar. Use this and you don't need to rotate the text manually.

3 - Fontwork is available by an icon on the Drawing toolbar. The main trick of using Fontwork is this: Double-click a shape to insert the "Fontwork" text art. Double-click that, then delete the text and enter your own text. Click outside of the object to see your own Fontwork text.

4 - Choose Insert - Frame for a text frame. This is more advanced than a text box: in a text frame you can use text in columns, sections, insert pictures, and much more, which is not possible in a text box.

5 - Insert a text box as in choice 1, then drag the width to reduce the space to a one letter column. Note that using the proportional Thorndale font, I had to replace the capital V by a lower case v to get this trick done. With a mono spaced font like Courier this is not necessary.