insert multiple pictures in writer

[mnatiello]

Hallo
I need to insert multiple pictures in a Writer document. About 10-20 pictures each time.
So far, I'm inserting them one by one, but I would like to do multiple selection or something
so that all the pictures can be entered at once. Also a standard resizing and letting the
pictures lay one after the other would be desirable.
I know there is a similar tool for impress, creating N slides out of N pictures, each slide
with one picture, but that does not work for me, I need the pictures on one page (or two)
of a Writer document, to be thereafter merged with text, etc. I know also there is
software for Vista or Windows doing that, it is in the web, but I'm a Linux user.

I use ooo 3.0.0.9 on SuSE11.1 Linux.

Thanks in advance,

M. Natiello

[helmerj]

Hi!

The multiple insertion is the easy part. Just fire up OO with a new writer document and then start your favorite file browser (I did use dolphin under KDE 4.2), select the images in the file browser and drag them over to the writer window while keeping the left mouse button pressed. They will get inserted all at once into he OO doc. Unfortunately they are stacked on top of each other.

I have not found away to do the next steps in one go. Click the images and chose the the anchor mode of e.g. "as character" which will prevent any image to be displayed on top the one you have just changed. I haven't found to select all images and do this for all of them at once.

Maybe anybody else knows how to do get this part accomplished...

Cheers Juergen

[mnatiello]

Thanks. I didI try with the shift button pressed with no result. It is a "workaround"
anyway since OO-writer itself apparently lacks internal commands to admit such a
thing. This should be noticed by the developers.

As for the initial formatting, I fancied that if I redefine the "Graphics" style as
"anchor as character"
"wide=40% of page"
"wrap= optimal"
then I would get the pictures ordered, two per line pairwise below each other.
It didn't work. You don't think there is a way to define a "default" for the insertion
so that the inserted picture gets per default the attributes I want it to have?
Regards,
M Natiello

[Hagar Delest]

[mnatiello]

Thanks Helmerj

To set the default anchoring "as character" would be optimal for my purposes, but
apparently this leads to other problems: the document cannot be saved as Word97's
.doc, because the pictures are not shown properly after saving/closing/reopening.
But this belongs in another thread.

As for multiple-insert, the situation seems to be like this:
* I may define a style having the default anchoring and wrapping (best would be
"as character" and "optimal" but I use now "to paragraph" and "optimal").
* There is a workaround to multiple opening by going via a graphic file manager,
then one can select a number of pictures and drag them to OpenOfficeWriter. This is
not optimal but good enough.
* Still missing: To give the pictures a default size upon insertion. I don't know how to do
it, at the moment pictures are inserted with their normal size, whatever this is and one
has to change the size by hand, picture by picture: Riightclick on each picture, go to
Picture menu, select width relative 40%, height relative and keep ratio (or whatever
you like). Changing one picture does not influence the future pictures either, so this
has to be done every time.
I desire to be able to decide in advance the typical size of my pictures (in a Style or
Template or other), this being valid throughout the document. Is there a way to do this?
Suboptimal but good enough would be to add an extra command "resize" to the menu
popping up when I rightclick on the picture. Are such things easy to write? Is there a
tutorial?

Thanks again,

M. Natiello

[helmerj]