Luke's LibreOffice Hacks

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...

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 ma...

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. If you don't care to read the background information and just want to skip straight to the solution, scroll down to the stuff with the yellow highlighting. Background : I convert a  lot of public domain books to text, edit them, add commentary, then convert them back to e-Book formats for reading on my computer, smartphone and other devices. I have a Google Pixel phone and am heavily invested in Google Play Books, so it is to my advantage to upload my converted and newly-created .epub and .pdf books to Google Play Books, for reading on my phone. The Problem: I completely ditched all things Microsoft several years ago. LibreOffice Writer is the only product I use for word processing, as it is far superior not only to other Linux offerings, it is way better than M...

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...