Different header on first page than the rest of the pages

[Oregon]

I have read through many posts on OpenOffice regarding this issue of formatting a different first page header or footer or both. I am a physician (MD) specializing in oncology and I have used an EHR (electronic health record) for almost 20 years.

I am a former PC user since 1980's and a user of Word, first for the PC and for the last 3 years for the Mac. Now I am a devoted Mac user and hopefully will get rid of my last PC "standing".

I am making a huge investment of my time to leave Word (Office for the Mac 2011) for many reasons. OpenOffice has some tremendous features but the learning curve for it is such that I will need to spend at least most of this weekend to get to where I can be more efficient with OpenOffice. This is after spending at least 20 hours already looking at OO documents, etc.

What I missing in OpenOffice is a counterpart to Lynda.com for Mac & PC users. These are paid for tutorials that are beautifully done.

A few final points:
1. Recommendations on OpenOffice forums are in general excellent but on occasion as so convoluted to border on torture.
2. Hot keys using OpenOffice for the Mac (using version 3.3.0) are different than hot keys for PC users or perhaps other versions.
3. I am very concerned that when I save my OpenOffice documents in .doc format and mail those to other MDs and patients that the formatting will be changed when they are opened by PC users that have Word or even Mac users that have Word as their default application.

I will persist and hopefully be successful in using OO.

[JohnV]

Oregon,

I'm not sure you understand that this is a user forum and no developers are here.

Convoluted advice comes from that can't express themselves well or misunderstand the problem (have personally been guilty of that on occasion).

The good thing about the forum is that most questions will be quickly answered.

[floris_v]

Oregon: it's worse than that. See this discussion about returning the cursor to where you were before a replace all command when you have time. The replies of the developers really make me wonder if those people ever use a word processor for what it's made for, they don't seem to understand what people expect from a word processor.
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[stephaniem]

@Oregon

Hi from a fellow user!

I understand your frustration. Sometimes we are not good at expressing ourselves well on these forums, but I do hope you persist.

I noticed your comment about the use of .doc files:

[aimeedes]

I am a total novice-- using open office b/c I cannot afford word. (no offense) But I was frustrated by the same problem with the headers and I think I found an easy way to do it. Maybe everyone already knows this, but it worked for me. Now I have a different header on the 1st page, just like APA requires. This is how I did it:

click F11
then selct the 4th icon on the top (or second to last)
the 4th selection down is "first page" - right click on it
select "modify"
then a box pops up
go to the tab that says "header"
click to put check mark in box next to "header on"
then click "ok"
then a new header should appear on 1st page (erasing the old one, but only on the first page-- my other pages kept their headers.)
I typed in my 1st page header - on the actual page, added a page number again and it was perfect
the only thing is- I had to go back to the "first page" box and change the margins to 1" b/c they automatically went to .79"

I hope this helps someone. I was going nuts until I figured it out.

[Collegestudent15]

Click on your first page then go to styles and formatting under Format. Go to the 4th icon and right click on First Page then Modify. Click on Header and uncheck the box that says Header On.
Then go to your second page and click in the header box and go to Insert>Fields>Page number and it should just number all the pages from the second on

[Nik-Fenmore]

Spent an hour looking at various convoluted forum posts going into endless detail of, let's face it, what should be a simple task. I love my open office, have used it for years and I found it incredibly hard to believe that I had to go through anywhere from 10 to 40 steps to make my headers have different page numbers. For those of you going through that process, you have my unending pity, I never could make it work no matter whose instructions I followed! lol

And then, on a whim I clicked on a youtube video. In under two minutes I have successfully figured out how to make it work. This doesn't cover having a different cover page/first page/whatever you wanna call it, there could be a little formatting with that, but for page numbers do what the wonderful woman says and in less than 5 steps, you have changing header page numbers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm8bMbrYNt4&feature=related

[floris_v]

Come to think of it, it's tougher to do in Word.
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[JoeK123]

I have tried all tips here, but no luck. I have a manual break at the end of the first page. I cannot change the style on the 2nd page without it changing the style of the first and vice versa.
There is no "Header" tab on the F11 "Styles" box.
There is no "First Page" in the style list.

Going on hour 2 trying to fix a header because the developers don't have a simple checkbox under "Insert Header" that says "not on first page." My first word processor was WordPerfect for DOS, btw - never seen anything this simple made so obtuse.

Reinstalling Office2K now because that process is faster than trying to add a header - go figure. javascript:emoticon('') I hate supporting M$, but I have work to do - not time to read manuals to do very obvious things that should be simple. I'll check back in a couple years and see if OO is ready for practical use.

[floris_v]

Try Tutorial on Page styles and headers/footers. When you insert a manual page break, you have to select a page style for the next page in the process, not afterwards.
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[joncmaxwell]

Because I'm not seeing it, why can't there be the option in styles and formatting, perhaps a box to check, that allows you to turn on or off headers on every page individually?

Let's say I just want 1 header on the first page. I go to styles and formatting, get to headers, then I have 2 little boxes that say:
-Enable Header on All Pages
&
-Only on this page

I can then select which one is needed so that way it makes it easier for users to format the page instead of having to come up with a scientific formula to set up a header on 1 dang page lol.

Just trying to make our lives somewhat easier. I see this is an issue. To be honest, I thought it was a bug when I tried to insert a header. I didn't want one on all pages. Most people dont.

[floris_v]

Well, headers are intended for stuff that gets repeated page after page. If you want a header for just one page, you could insert a frame and put that where you want it with the header text in it.
You can read the tutorial linked to in my earlier post and judge if understanding and using that requires a degree in higher mathematics.
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