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flabdablet
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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 Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 1:10 am Post subject: Select All fails in this document |
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I've just installed OOo 2.02 on a student's computer (Windows XP Home SP2). She needs to insert one of these standard cover sheets, provided by her university only in Word .doc format, at the front of every document she submits for assessment.
Her usual procedure with Word would be to open the cover sheet document, hit Ctrl-A to select it all, then copy and paste it into the front of her submission. Using OOo Writer, Ctrl-A selects only the university logo in the top left corner. So does Edit->Select All. So does a drag-select over the whole page. So does a click, shift-click extended selection. This still happens after saving the .doc as an .odt and reloading it. Can anybody figure out why?
Last edited by flabdablet on Fri May 12, 2006 11:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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RGB
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Joined: 25 Nov 2003
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Location: In Lombardy, near a glass of red Tuscany wine
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 1:42 am Post subject: |
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The problem is that the logo is inside a table in the begining of the document: Writer have problems with tables at the beginning of documents.
The only way to solve this problem is to add an space before the table: put the cursor at the beginning of the first cell (left side of the logo) and press enter. Now, Ctrl+A work as expected. |
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flabdablet
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 2:21 am Post subject: |
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Well, that kind of sucks. Is there an open bug on that issue?
Inserting a blank line does indeed seem to allow Select All to work, but it also b0rks the page - it makes the boxes at the bottom break onto the next page. I guess I could show her how to insert the blank line, then Select All, then copy/paste, then delete the leading blank line from the final document - but that would mean that her whole submission inherits this table-first-thing brokenness.
The other thing that goes wrong with this document is that when it's inserted into the front of another, all the text changes from 11 point to 12 point and no longer fits on the page. Is there a way to tell Writer not to mess with the text sizes on a copy/paste or Insert File? |
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Joined: 23 Aug 2005
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Location: Seven Kings, London, UK
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 2:50 am Post subject: |
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- Fill in the parts of the form that don't change.
- Apply 11 point as direct formatting to stop it changing
- Keep the default body text style at 12 pt or whatever you want for the assignment.
- Save the document as a template.
- To start a new assignment, open the template, fill in the changeable details and start typing.
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jrkrideau
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Joined: 08 Aug 2005
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Location: Kingston ON Canada
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 3:32 am Post subject: |
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| flabdablet wrote: | Well, that kind of sucks. Is there an open bug on that issue?
Inserting a blank line does indeed seem to allow Select All to work, but it also b0rks the page - it makes the boxes at the bottom break onto the next page. I guess I could show her how to insert the blank line, then Select All, then copy/paste, then delete the leading blank line from the final document - but that would mean that her whole submission inherits this table-first-thing brokenness.
The other thing that goes wrong with this document is that when it's inserted into the front of another, all the text changes from 11 point to 12 point and no longer fits on the page. Is there a way to tell Writer not to mess with the text sizes on a copy/paste or Insert File? |
I think the problem is that those fonts are being dictated by her default styles and if her set-up is like mine the TABLE, DEFAULT and TEXT styles are all 12 pt. You will notice that ASSIGNMENT INFORMATION SHEET is in 14 pt in the Word file but is converted to 11pt in OOo.
Essentially the template is a typical 'formatted on the fly' Word document that does notuse styles.
If she is going to be using this assignment coversheet all the time she probably would be best advised to spend 20 minutes to format the thing properly using Styles, save it as a file and also save the new styles as part of her basic Writer template. Then she could just cut and paste as usual or possibly even better insert the file since I believe this will import the styles that she has used and she would not have to worry about differing templates.
If she is new to OOo and to the concept of styles I would recommend that she have a look at OOo 2.0.x User Guide . The Working with Styles and Introduction to Styles are both very useful.
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/index.html
OOo Writer is highly Styles oriented and a couple of hours learning about styles can save many hours of work and frustration latter. Once one is familiar with Styles one should never use the formatting icons again. 
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jrkrideau
Kingston ON Canada
Currently using Windows 7 & OOo 3.4.0 and Ubuntu 12.04 & LibreOffice 3.5.2.2 |
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flabdablet
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 11:40 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | OOo Writer is highly Styles oriented and a couple of hours learning about styles can save many hours of work and frustration latter. Once one is familiar with Styles one should never use the formatting icons again. |
One could easily say the same for Word
My concern is that trying to persuade people to install OOo instead of jumping onto the M$ upgrade treadmill is made harder if OOo doesn't work the way they expect it to. For the 90% of Word users who still just hold down the Enter key to get to a new page because they've never discovered Insert Page Break, styles (and content-oriented formatting generally) are just WAY too scary.
In this case, we have a student who is accustomed to working a certain way, and finds herself able to work quite happily that way on every machine she uses except for the new one I've just configured for her with OOo, which from her point of view just behaves bizarrely. There is no way she's going to change her workflow just to fit in with what she's now likely to perceive as a buggy, inferior tool.
I will mess about with this cover sheet for her, and generate a .odt she can paste in (or Insert File) without trouble - but I still think it's a pity I need to. |
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rcarring
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Joined: 03 May 2006
Posts: 22
Location: United States
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject: Styles |
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I have only recently discovered that styles make the job of reformatting ebooks from original ascii text files in OpenOffice that much simpler.
Previously I also started making better use of Styles and Formatting In Word 2003.
A couple of notes: Word 2003 word document format is different to 97/2000/XP. Opening a Word 2003 word document in a word processor that allegedly supports doc format by conversion (e.g. Abiword 2.4.4) can cause problems if the doc itself uses complex styles etc.
Most filters for alternate word processors rely on being able to parse the original format into RTF and then into whatever native format is used by the alternate word processor.
A little known Windows program called Word express made very good use of filters and even supports formats like Word perfect etc.
If you don't have Word 2003 download the 60 day trial from Microsoft's site, use it to convert your files then uninstal it =D |
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jrkrideau
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Joined: 08 Aug 2005
Posts: 6733
Location: Kingston ON Canada
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| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 7:54 am Post subject: |
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| flabdablet wrote: | | Quote: | | OOo Writer is highly Styles oriented and a couple of hours learning about styles can save many hours of work and frustration latter. Once one is familiar with Styles one should never use the formatting icons again. |
One could easily say the same for Word
My concern is that trying to persuade people to install OOo instead of jumping onto the M$ upgrade treadmill is made harder if OOo doesn't work the way they expect it to. For the 90% of Word users who still just hold down the Enter key to get to a new page because they've never discovered Insert Page Break, styles (and content-oriented formatting generally) are just WAY too scary.
In this case, we have a student who is accustomed to working a certain way, and finds herself able to work quite happily that way on every machine she uses except for the new one I've just configured for her with OOo, which from her point of view just behaves bizarrely. There is no way she's going to change her workflow just to fit in with what she's now likely to perceive as a buggy, inferior tool.
I will mess about with this cover sheet for her, and generate a .odt she can paste in (or Insert File) without trouble - but I still think it's a pity I need to. |
Well I agree that it is a pity that the university does not supply the correctly formatted file to use It is the one that produced the flawed form in the first place.
On the other hand, OOo is very Styles oriented and without some idea of how to use them your student is probably going to be at a disadvantage, one that could cost her hours and hours of wasted time over her academic career ( just like using Word and reinventing the wheel every time she writes a paper.
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jrkrideau
Kingston ON Canada
Currently using Windows 7 & OOo 3.4.0 and Ubuntu 12.04 & LibreOffice 3.5.2.2 |
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