Luke's LibreOffice Hacks

We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As always, if you don't want to be bored by the Scenario, simply jump to the Instructions portion below. Scenario: I download a ton of public domain books and other publications that I use for research and republication. Though I try to be disciplined and meticulous in categorizing the downloads into numerous folders and sub-folders, with more than 10,000 files I find myself doing a lot of searches for certain words or phrases in certain files within certain folders. Here's an illustrative example. I have a single word I am looking for because it has been, for 75 years, a hot topic in general public discourse (let's say, so as not to offend anyone, the word is :"blooper.") Then I want to export or copy and paste the search results (list of files...

We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. I was converting and modernizing an old text in which the reversed text of a passage was printed, as an example of how difficult it is for our minds to contend with things that don't fit with our habits.Being too lazy to read and/or type all the words back into their original or "normal" front-to-back sequence, I started a web search for a solution. Like so many others who need help on this kind of problem, I wasn't even sure what words or phrases to use in my search. Rest assured, though, I used a plethora of related words and phrases. Of course, most of the search results took me to the generally useless User Forums, where I went through dozens of threads that were (a) closed to further comments; (b) full of comments from people who obviously did ...

We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. In LibreOffice: Create a LibreOffice Writer document. Format the document using Styles, using Headings (1,2,3,4 etc) for TOC levels (example: Heading 1 for Chapter name; Heading 2 for Chapter Subtopic; and so forth). Insert a Table of Contents into the document (Insert, Table of Contents and Index) “Create From” “Additional Styles” Select the Heading levels you used in your document (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading etc.).  Select only as many levels as you want to see in your TOC. To Create a PDF in LibreOffice File, Export to PDF Choose “Archival” and “Export Outlines” (in addition to other Default settings). To Create an epub from a LibreOffice Writer file DON’T USE THE LIBREOFFICE FUNCTION (File, Export to Epub) if you want to create an epub that includes a TOC with...

Rarely do I give Microsoft credit for anything, nor do I recommend that you touch much of anything that they produce. Occasionally, though, even a diehard Linux user like me must give credit where credit is due. And credit is due to Microsoft for their very good Snipping Tool, which goes from very good to amazing when paired with Power Tools. Let me back up here and say that I am running Windows 11 (technically, my wife has a Windows machine and I borrow it only for small things like using Snipping Tool or Adobe Digital Editions.) Use-case scenario: When I was still working in the corporate world, many of my jobs required me or someone on my staff to convert a graphic pdf file to a searchable text file. Adobe Acrobat or one of its equally-expensive competitors was about the only way to accomplish the task. Today I am going to show you how to do the same conversion from a graphics file to a searchable text file, using only the Microsoft Snipping Tool (and, of course, some text-base pro...

Microsoft Word has a built-in Style Separator function that allows the user to mix two different styles in the same paragraph; LibreOffice, as of the date of this post, does not have the same capability. Below is a comment I appended to the bug number referenced in the subject line of this post. I'm sure I will be kicked out of the forum…again.  If you don't care to read a snarky vs. snarky post, here is the summary: First, LibreOffice Writer does not have a Style Separator function and the Document Foundation does not (at this time) intend to develop one. Second, the alternatives suggested by the devs and by users in the forum are clever but worthless to the serious user. "This is an ongoing issue that has been reported in at least two separate bug reports and the developers have responded, once with "there are ways to accomplish this without developing an actual style separator" (my description) and, in this bug report, "Looks like this is a bit of an obsc...

Disclaimer : Don't worry: Removing your current version won't mess with your LO files or with your LO settings (dictionary, autocorrect, etc.). On the other hand, people can do some pretty weird stuff that nobody told them to do, thus we deny liability and culpability for anything that goes wrong in your attempt to follow these instructions, no matter if you follow them exactly or if you get creative and leave the beaten path. So, here goes. I have my reasons for not wanting to use the Snap version of LibreOffice. So here is how I keep my LO up-to-date without having to resort to the Snap version. (This is a much quicker process than it appears, usually fewer than ten minutes). Why do it this way? First, I don't want the Snap version of LibreOffice. While I do have both Snap and Flatpak versions of various programs installed on my computer, and without going into a lengthy discussion of why I don't want to use the Snap version of LO, suffice it to say that I don't t...