How do you create headers in open office?

thegirlwhowrites · Apr 20, 2009

Is there a way to have open office automatically create headers for you or do you manually type the headers on each page?
I've tried figuring this out but I still can't find how to do this automatically.
Here's an example of how I'd like the headers to automatically appear on the top right of each page, starting with the second page (with it including the page numbers in order):

blah / blah / 2

blah / blah / 3

blah / blah / 4

blah / blah / 5

blah / blah / 6

blah / blah / 7

etc....

Or if anyone has any suggestions of other manuscript software, that would be great.

ChristineR · Apr 20, 2009

Format | Page, or Styles and Formatting to bring up the format window, then click on the Page format icon (fourth from left) to list page formats in use, then right-click and choose Modify on the format you are using.

The first method brings you the format of the page you are working on, the second lets you manage all your formats. Typically you'd use First Page for chapter headings and Default for everything else, but you can also create your own. Double click a format to apply it to your current page.

Once you have the format you want, go to the header tab, and check the Header On box. Then go back to your page, type blah/blah/, then Insert | Fields | Page Number. You'll also have to use Format | Paragraph to right-justify it.

The page numbers will start with one, and assuming you use First Page for your first page and leave headers off of it, the first labeled page will be two. If you want to spread your numbers across files, that's a different problem, which I can attempt to explain after you've conquered this one.

thegirlwhowrites · Apr 21, 2009

ChristineR said:
Format | Page, or Styles and Formatting to bring up the format window, then click on the Page format icon (fourth from left) to list page formats in use, then right-click and choose Modify on the format you are using.

The first method brings you the format of the page you are working on, the second lets you manage all your formats. Typically you'd use First Page for chapter headings and Default for everything else, but you can also create your own. Double click a format to apply it to your current page.

Once you have the format you want, go to the header tab, and check the Header On box. Then go back to your page, type blah/blah/, then Insert | Fields | Page Number. You'll also have to use Format | Paragraph to right-justify it.

The page numbers will start with one, and assuming you use First Page for your first page and leave headers off of it, the first labeled page will be two. If you want to spread your numbers across files, that's a different problem, which I can attempt to explain after you've conquered this one.

ChristineR:
sorry for the long response.
Thank you, thank you and thank you again!
I thought I'd never find out how to do this but I FINALLY got it to work after following your instructions.
thanks!

Kila · Jun 17, 2009

You can also click in the header and insert fields for author and title before page number.

Once I got used to doing this I thought how neat it was and congratulated myself on finally getting SMF to work for rtf files (I've been using TeX—I don't have M$ Word).

Then I got the following response from an editor:

On a formatting note, the ms was a little difficult to read because of its lack of either line breaks or indented paragraphs -- I'm not sure if this was intentional, sometimes it's an artifact of save-as-RTF. But thought I would let you know.

I have no idea what happened to the line breaks, but opening up the manuscript in Jarte (Wordpad-based), I saw that all the fields, page numbers and paragraph indents had been stripped!

I'm still cringeing. Unfortunately, most editors want rtf files, and Jarte/Wordpad won't allow me to insert page numbers after a text-based header.

Any tips from you Oo users?

ChristineR · Jun 17, 2009

I have never had it do this to me, although it messed up the page numbering. I suggest you ask/complain on the OO forums. You probably won't get anywhere, but who knows, they might have advice.

Kila · Jun 17, 2009

Thanks, I'll try that.

Is anyone here using Oo for standard manuscript formatting? Could there be a way around this using templates or styles (I'm an Oo newbie).

ChristineR · Jun 18, 2009

I use Oo for my standard manuscript formatting. I'm not sure what your question is. You can create a blank document, change all the default formats and other formats, like first pages, to be what you need them, then set this file as your default template, or use it as the basis for your manuscript format files.

Kila · Jun 22, 2009

My problem is that I had a perfectly professional-looking document in Oo, sent it to an editor and received feedback that the headers had been stripped and the line spacing removed. The editor pointed out that these things sometimes happen when saving in rtf format.

She doesn't use Open Office, and I can't make her.

She was gracious enough to read the story anyway. I usually just get form rejections, and I wish I could be sure that these are because of my bad writing, and not because of formatting errors

ChristineR · Jun 22, 2009

I tried writing out my WIP as an .rtf, and it looked correct. The first thing I'd do is open the .rtf on my own computer and see how it looks. If it appears to be trashed, I don't have much advice other than going to the Oo support forums and uploading some sample files (the .otf that looks good and the .rtf that is trashed) and see if anyone there can advise you. If they can't figure it out, you can create a bug report and it may get fixed eventually.

If the .rtf looks right on your machine, then something happened between your e-mail box and the agent's desk, so then you can pursue that direction.

Kila · Jun 22, 2009

ChristineR said:
I tried writing out my WIP as an .rtf, and it looked correct. The first thing I'd do is open the .rtf on my own computer and see how it looks. If it appears to be trashed, I don't have much advice other than going to the Oo support forums and uploading some sample files (the .otf that looks good and the .rtf that is trashed) and see if anyone there can advise you. If they can't figure it out, you can create a bug report and it may get fixed eventually.

If the .rtf looks right on your machine, then something happened between your e-mail box and the agent's desk, so then you can pursue that direction.

If only I had opened the ms on my hubby's labtop!

The thing is that I don't have Word--I avoid it like the plague--and when I opened the ms with OpenOffice (which I have since uninstalled) it looked just fine.

I've since tried out Abiword. It retains the indents and spacings but either strips the header or makes it appear on the title page as well.

Anybody who uses OpenOffice: I strongly recommend you save as doc and check your ms opens correctly in Word. Most editors throw badly formatted manuscripts in the bin and send you a form rejection!

I do not want to submit rtf files anymore.

[EDIT: it's nothing that the Oo developers wish to address. RTF is not an open document format.]

ChristineR · Jun 22, 2009

Word pad creates and opens rtf by default--as far as I know, it is still bundled with Windows. The specification for rtf is public and it is intended to be portable. The Oo people really should support it properly, and if they don't, they're stupid.

Kila · Jun 23, 2009

Opening SMF files in Wordpad/Jarte can corrupt them. It certainly doesn't display them correctly if they have been formatted in Oo. Of course, Wordpad may be what the editor has used--I wish they'd tell us so that we can send them the proper format!

To be sure the Oo developers are stupid. But then we are the only ones who have to use rtf--a tiny minority. The rest of the world uses whatever Word saves as by default.

I wish editors would accept pdf files generated by TeX. Then we could all use the sffms package and there would be no more problems...

How do you create headers in open office?

thegirlwhowrites

ChristineR

What happened?

thegirlwhowrites

Kila

ChristineR

What happened?

Kila

ChristineR

What happened?

Kila

ChristineR

What happened?

Kila

ChristineR

What happened?

Kila