Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours |
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Hour 8: Formatting Your Document |
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Beyond the character and paragraph settings, you need to set up the pages through which the paragraphs flow. You can open the dialog box to organize the page layout of your document by choosing Page from the Format menu.
Unfortunately, StarDivision chose to place an advanced formatting tool as the default first tab on this dialog box (the Organizer tab). You'll learn about organizing styles in this tab in Hour 9.
After you have the Page dialog box open, choose the Page tab, as shown in Figure 8.11. From this tab of the dialog box you can set the margins, page layout, and paper size.
All four sides of the printed page are represented by the four Margins fields: Left, Right, Top, and Bottom. You can use the tiny arrows next to the fields or you can type in a number. The measurement used is the one you defined in the General Options (see Hour 4).
The Paper format area defines what type of paper your document will be printed on. You can select a paper size and either Portrait or Landscape printing.
Figure
8.11
You
set the margins, paper size, and page orientation in
the Page tab of
the Page dialog box.
The Preview area shows you what effect your changes will have, both by the size and shape of the white box (representing the page) and by the black margin lines within the white box.
The Numbering field enables you to set the numbering style for the document: letters, Arabic numerals, or Roman numerals.
The page numbering is set from the Page Numbering item on the Tools menu. Unfortunately, the power of the page numbering feature is not what it could be, compared to other word processing systems.
Tip - If you need to set up different page numbering styles (using the Page dialog box) or starting numbers (using Page Numbering from the Tools menu), use separate document files. |
Finally, you can set which pages in your document these settings apply to. This setting is not nearly as flexible as it could be; if you've used FrameMaker or WordPerfect, you might be disappointed to see that you can apply different formats to only a limited set of pages, rather than setting new information for each and every page as needed.
The Page layout drop-down list enables you to define that the current layout applies to
All left-side pages (even numbered).
All right-side pages (odd numbered).
Left and right (Mirrored) in coordination. In this case, the Left/Right margin fields change to Inner/Outer.
All the pages in the document.
Working with headers and footers in StarOffice is convenient. Instead of using hidden codes and reference pages, StarOffice places a separate box on each page in which you can click and start entering text for the header or footer.
In the Page dialog box, you can configure headers from the Header tab (see Figure 8.12). By definition, a header or footer is included on every page of your document, so if you don't want to include them on some parts of a larger document, use separate document files.
Figure
8.12
The
Header tab in the Page dialog box is used to configure headers.
The following definitions will help you set up your headers:
The header is off by default; you can check this box when you want to use a header.
The Spacing field defines how much space is left between the header text and the top of the regular body text in your document.
The Height field defines how tall the header is, but
The Autofit height check box can be selected to make the height fit whatever text you enter in the header.
The header always uses the top margin of the page that you set in the Page tab of this dialog box.
If you check the Autofit height box, you can set left and right margins for the header because these also affect the height of a multiline header.
You can also check the Same content box to mirror each header onto both left and right pages of your document.
Now you can switch to the Footer tab to configure a footer for each page. (See Figure 8.13.) Of course, if you didn't have a header, you can still have a footer.
Figure
8.13
The
Footer tab is
part of the Page dialog box.
The footer is turned off by default. Check the Footer on box before trying any of the other options.
With the footer on, the same options are available as with the header. But now look at the Preview window on the right side of the dialog box. Whenever you enable both headers and footers, the Preview window shows you both. Any changes that you make in the spacing or height of either is reflected in the Preview window of both tabs.
Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours |
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Hour 8: Formatting Your Document |
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