Page numbers "outside"

AndyE · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:09 am Post subject: Page numbers "outside"

In the olden days when I used Word, my preference was for page numbers to be "outside"; that is to say, on the right of right hand pages and on the left of left hand pages.

So far, I haven't been able to do this in OOo. Please tell me where I have gone wrong!

I have three page styles in use - first page (no page number), right page and left page. I have set left page and right page to have footer on, and I even remembered to set it so that first page was followed by left page, left page by right page and right page by left page. So far so good.

Then I went into the footer on left page, did Insert>Field>Page Number and a "2" appeared - excellent. I then formatted the footer for left alignment so the 2 was at the left. Moving on to right page, I did much the same, a "3" appeared and I formatted the footer for right alignment so the 3 was at the right. Super.

Except that when I moved back up to left page the "2" page number was now right aligned as well.

So I went back to my page styles, right clicked on left page and clicked the footer tab. I thought what I needed to do was to uncheck "same content left/right" so that I could have the two different. But "same content left/right" was greyed out and wouldn't let me change it.

Have I done something wrong, or can I just not have the footer aligned differently in different page styles? If not it's not a huge problem - I'll just centre align the page numbers. Be nice to know though ...

Bhikkhu Pesala · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:37 am Post subject:

It sounds like you're doing it right. Just check the style organize tab to make sure that left page is followed by right page, and that right page is followed by left page.

To start a new chaper, Insert Manual break, page break, and choose first page style.
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jrkrideau · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 8:08 am Post subject: Re: Page numbers "outside"

AndyE · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:50 pm Post subject:

Thanks you both. I just tried the suggestion from Canada myself, and yes it works. It would certainly do the job for a relatively short document, but be rather tedious for a long one.

So it looks as if we are left with the conclusion that "inside" and "outside" page numbering are not directly supported by Writer, and I for one am not going to go and buy the other product for that one feature - I'm quite happy with centred page numbers!

What would be useful - and it probably exists somewhere - is a list of things that Word can do and Writer cannot - and similarly for Excel and Calc. I suppose you would more expect this to come from Microsoft in attempting to sell their product, but I can see at useful for OOo as well - as in "we can do everything they can except this feature that hardly one any ever uses and we are way cheaper."

When Excel was quite new and Lotus 1-2-3 was the market leader in spreadsheets, I remember Microsoft publishing a comparison of the two products, which did include the (few) things that Excel *couldn't* do. One of them was the rather odd "+/-" number format, where for instance 3 was shown as +++ and -2 as --. (Useful in descriptive statistics, or so am I told, but wasn't missed elsewhere.)

Anyone know of such a comparison between Office and the directly comparable parts of OOo?

jrkrideau · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 4:42 pm Post subject:

AndyE · Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 5:45 am Post subject:

Thanks. Yes, I had misunderstood you - I thought you meant to go through the document and manually move the number on every other page. (Which does work but as I suggested would quickly get tedious.)

But yes, what you in fact meant works, so the feature is supported. I take it all back!