Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 9: Using Advanced Formatting Tools

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Hour 9
Using Advanced Formatting Tools

In this hour, you learn how to use advanced formatting tools such as footnotes, columns, and text styles. StarOffice provides many formatting tools beyond what you learn here, but these are the formatting options that will be most useful to you.

You'll learn how to insert, edit, and delete footnotes, as well as to set up custom footnote options. You'll also learn how to define and use columns. Finally, you'll learn about using styles to quickly format your document.

Using Footnotes


Those small notes you sometimes see at the bottom of a page are called footnotes. These notes provide additional information (usually parenthetical in nature) about the text within the document.

Tip - If these extra notes are located at the end of a document instead of at the bottom of each page, they're known as endnotes. Endnotes are created in the same manner as footnotes in StarOffice.


A footnote consists of two parts: the marker in the body of your document and the footnote text, located either at the bottom of the page or at the end of your document. These two parts are shown in Figure 9.1.

Figure 9.1
A footnote marker and the footnote text to which the marker refers.

In the next section, you learn how to create, edit, and delete footnotes. Before you begin, however, here's a look at the two footnote menu items in StarOffice:

Creating a Footnote

Creating a footnote in a StarWriter document is quite easy: Just place the cursor in the body of the text where you want the footnote marker to appear. Then choose Footnote from the Insert Menu (see Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2
Choose Footnote from the Insert menu to create a new footnote.

After you select the Footnote option under the Insert Footnote Menu, an Insert Footnote dialog box appears (see Figure 9.3). In this dialog box, you can select between two options:

Figure 9.3
The Insert Footnote dialog box showing the two options: Automatic and Character.

Choose OK in the Insert Footnote dialog box to continue. Two things happen immediately (see Figure 9.4):

Figure 9.4
When you insert a footnote, the marker appears and you can immediately enter the footnote text.

Tip - StarOffice automatically renumbers all footnotes as you work. You don't have to insert footnotes in order throughout your document.


When you've entered the text for the footnote, press the Page Up key or click on the body of your document.

Editing a Footnote

Editing a footnote is also easy. If you place your mouse pointer next to a footnote marker in your document, the pointer changes to a hand. If you click on any footnote marker, the cursor jumps to the footnote text, and you can edit it as needed.

If you prefer, you can also scroll down the page. When you see the footnote text, click anywhere in the footnote to begin editing it.

Tip - If you place the mouse pointer on the footnote number in the footnote text area and click, the cursor moves to the marker in the body of your text. This is a great way to find where footnote or endnote references are located in a document.


Deleting a Footnote

You can delete any footnote by highlighting the footnote marker and pressing delete. This deletes the footnote marker and the footnote text; other footnotes are renumbered as necessary.

You can use the keyboard or the mouse to delete a footnote. To use the keyboard, place the cursor after the footnote marker and press the backspace key. To use the mouse, position the mouse pointer near the footnote marker until the pointer changes to a hand. Click and drag across the footnote marker so that it's selected. Press Delete to delete the footnote.

Tip - You can use Undo on the Edit menu if you delete a footnote and then change your mind.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 9: Using Advanced Formatting Tools

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