Introduction

OpenOffice.org, the most well known Office Suite available in Windows and GNU/Linux platform is a great application that can be used as an alternative for Microsoft Office. OOo offers the same functionality of Microsoft Office for free. You don't have to pay for it, plus you can get involved in the development process by joining the projects available on their websites like i did by joining the Documentation Project.

One of the facility supported by OOo is page numbering, which can be used for many purposes. For simple page numbering, standard features is enough, but when you need some advanced page numbering in your reports, this can be tricky and frustating (like i did when i use OOo for the first time). I'm using OOo to make my final project reports and i found this method accidentally, so i decided to write this tutorial so other people can use this tutorial for their reports also. What i need is page numbering, but it should be in two different formats. For the first format, it should be written in i, ii, ii, etc, and the second format should be 1, 2, 3, etc. This two format must be in one document, not in separate document. Shall we start?

Preparations

As usual, before the main trick, we should preparate ourself by understanding Style. It is important as we will use Style to arrange our page numbering format. Style can be used to define the properties of our documents, such as margins, font, padding, spacing, etc. OOo comes with five different styles, Page Style, Character Style, Frame Style, Frame Style, dan Numbering Styles. You can view them all in the Stylist window, by typing F11. You can add, modify or delete styles to adjust your need. It will be a good idea to leave the default style. You should make new style and modify it. Play along with Styles until you can understand how Style works in a document. When you are done, please continue to the next sub section.

Main Trick

You have learned how to play with Style. It's time to implement this into our document. Make two new Page Style and use this following information:

1. Name : Introduction
2. Next Style : Introduction
3. Format : i, ii, iii, ...

1. Name : Reports
2. Next Style : Reports
3. Format : 1, 2, 3, ...

Next, pick the Introduction style and start writing your introduction section. You can add page number by picking Insert > Footer > Introduction and Insert > Field > Page Number. It will be in i, ii, iii, ... format since we use the Introduction style. When you have finished and the next page should have a different page numbering, you should NOT change the style manually, as it will change the whole document. You should use Page Break via Insert > Manual Break. Choose Page Break in the Type column and pick your next Page Style that have been defined that uses 1, 2, 3 format for the page numbering. You should start the page number by thicking the Change page number option and write 1 in the next textbox so the page number will start by 1. If you want to start the document with a different number, write it now. When you insert your page numbering, you will have 1, 2, 3, ... instead of i , ii, iii, .... Nice transition. You can continue your writing without worrying the page number again.

If you need another different page numbering, you can make another Page Style and use the same method above to format the Page Style being used to format page numbering.

Need Help?

You can visit the Documentation Project which provide HOWTO, Manuals, Setup Guide for OOo users. You can also join the developer's mailing list or OOo-author's mailing list to ask questions about OOo. There are a lot of nice people who are willing to help you at no cost at all. For Indonesian people, the Indonesian Documentation Project is also available. You can also contribute to the project, by visiting Local Indonesian Documentation Project or it's mirror.

Last Update : 5 June 2006 :: 15:11:37