Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 8: Formatting Your Document

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Arranging the Page


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.

Setting the Page Margins and Paper Size

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.

Caution - Depending on your printer setup, the default paper size might be A4, a European paper size that makes all your documents look strange if you live in the U.S. Check the paper size for the first few documents you create to be sure that it's set to Letter.


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.

Defining Basic Page Numbering and Layout

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

Adding a Header or Footer to Each Page

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:

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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