Luke's LibreOffice Hacks

In LibreOffice Writer, there is an option for defining how much space a footnote can occupy on a page…but it is an option in theory only. In actuality, the function is quirky and The Document Foundation has, to my knowledge, never come up with a reason for the problem, not to mention a fix for it. The scenario (see images above) Let's say that you have a fairly long document and you want your footnotes to be numbered consecutively for the entire document, and you want your footnotes to appear at the end of each page. So far, so good. You have discovered how to make that happen by going to Tools, Footnotes and Endnotes, and doing the set-up there. But how do you make sure that your footnotes do not break across pages? Do this: Click on Format, Page Style, Footnote. In "Footnote Area" click on "Not Larger Than Page Area," then click on Okay. The problem Following the instruction above works under special circumstances only, which are defined on the LibreOffice Hel

First let me give you a straight answer, unlike the (nonsense)-answer you will find on the LibreOffice Online Help pages.  Here is the original question as found on the LO Help Pages site 6 years ago (it appears that nothing has changed and nothing has been done about this "closed" issue since 2015). How to change background color of comment(ctrl+alt+c) & is there any other feature like comment that can be hide-unhide “on click”? I found in options, it allows to change the bright yellow color of notes in Spreadsheet. Which option do i use to change bright yellow color of comment in Impress? Straight-forward Answer :  Changing the background color of comment boxes in Writer and Impress cannot be done. Period.  Forget about all the LO Help replies that explain how each user of a shared document is assigned a different color for his/her comments; that has nothing to do with the simple question as originally stated. And  the suggestion that frames can be used to make remind

UPDATE : (10-30-2022) The method described under "CASE" below works with the older "Ubuntu Tweaks" but not the newer "Gnome Tweaks." Fortunately, you can accomplish the same objective by going to (System) Settings / Keyboard and in the "Compose Key" box select the key you want to use to invoke the typing of Special Characters. In my own case, I selected the Right-Alt key as I rarely used it for anything else. Now, if I want to enter a long-dash, for instance, I tap the right-alt key, followed by tapping the dash sign on the keyboard three times. A long dash — is entered, as opposed to the ugly three dashes --- you get if you don't use the Compose Key method.  The table below remains valid for this updated method. Once you get used to typing the correct key combinations, which is mainly an intuitive task, it is easy to enter all those special characters you occasionally need to use. ### (We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find help

Finding this in the Toolbar is not at all intuitive, so here's how you can change the size and thickness of that little bar that separates a footnote from normal text on a page. Select Format, Page Style, Footnote, then make any desired changes in the dialog box that pops up and click "OK". That's it. You're done. 

If your work involves converting documents, and after the conversion you need to do a lot of Find and Replace to clean up the converted document, you might have found yourself needing to use Regular Expressions. Trying to use Regex in MS Word or Google Docs is a frustrating mess unless you are, perhaps, a developer. For the everyday user at work or home (WFH), trying to figure out Regex in the MS or G Suite environment is a mess, even if you use one of the Find and Replace G Suite add-ons.  You can use Regular Expressions (Regex) to find and replace empty paragraphs; multiple, contiguous empty spaces; empty spaces at the beginning of a paragraph; etc. As someone who works almost exclusively in a Linux environment, and whose work requires the conversion of hundreds of pdf, txt, and epub documents to .docx and .odt formats, my favorite (and only really useful) hack is to use LibreOffice and its far-superior-to-MS Word and G Suite "Find & Replace" function.  The first step i