Open Office

[Jon Coffin]

Hi, I wrote some short books in Open Office with illustrations and don't remember having too many problems, other than pictures moving around a little in one of them. So... I had this great idea of a much longer one, with a lot more illustrations, and I worked and worked on it for months. I did struggle a bit to get pix to stay put where I wanted them sometimes, but finally finished it and was happy 'til I went to print it on my big new laser printer... When I hit Print it repaginates and rearranges things all over the place and the result is all mixed up. I bought the Affinity suite but it doesn't support that format. Does anybody have any suggestions?? I am almost bald from tearing my hair out over this...   Thanks

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Jon.

OpenOffice will save in .odt format by default which Affinity Publisher cannot handle. However, you can tell it to save in .docx format, which Publisher can handle.

[Jon Coffin]

Hi Walt, Thanks for helping, but my "save as" drop down doesn't list a docx. I read what you wrote on a 'net thread and it says you're right, but I don't have it. I have my book in Open Office 4.1.7 ??  I am so frustrated.  Thanks

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Jon Coffin said:

Hi Walt, Thanks for helping, but my "save as" drop down doesn't list a docx. I read what you wrote on a 'net thread and it says you're right, but I don't have it. I have my book in Open Office 4.1.7 ??  I am so frustrated.  Thanks

Interesting. I hadn't realized that OpenOffice couldn't create .docx. On the other hand, I switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice a long time ago, as I was unhappy with OpenOffice in general. The file formats are compatible, so you might try installing LibreOffice and saving to .docx from it.

Or, if OpenOffice will save as RTF, use that format.

[lacerto]

(...)

[wonderings]

That is the problem with trying to do this sort of setup in a word processing program. If you have it set how you like it in Open Office are you able to save a PDF and then print the PDF as nothing should change when going to print from that. This is where Publisher would be much better suited for any new projects you are going to begin. If it was just text then I would say do it anywhere but the fact that you are setting it up with illustrations is where Publisher is needed to do this easily and properly. 

[Jon Coffin]

Hi, Thanks for all the help!  (Back from lunch)  The problem is as soon as I hit Print to open the dialog box to choose a print method like "to PDF", it repaginates my file. I can tell without looking closely because the page count increases. It will leave gaps, omit pix, push pix into the margins, and just wreak havoc. Then it takes a long time for me to go back through and straighten it all out, after a couple of times of that, I figured there's got to be a better way. I stumbled on a good deal on Affinity and here I am. I guess it just amounts to you get what you don't pay for with Open Office. Libre does the same thing. Rich text format won't open in Affinity, either. Libre's "save as" file extensions don't look like they'd work, maybe, I don't know... I am not good at this and am about ready to give up. I did the attachment book's cover in Photoshop... it's a fun book about an island in Maine where I live. Have to go to Home Depot... I'll be back!

[Wosven]

Perhaps it's because you're printing on a different format that the one on which you made your document.

Try to create a print format the same size as the pages of your document, and "print to PDF" using it.

But check if there's not another way that using the print menu, to export as PDF: usually, this permit to export using the document's page's size.

[wonderings]

14 minutes ago, Jon Coffin said:

Hi, Thanks for all the help!  (Back from lunch)  The problem is as soon as I hit Print to open the dialog box to choose a print method like "to PDF", it repaginates my file. I can tell without looking closely because the page count increases. It will leave gaps, omit pix, push pix into the margins, and just wreak havoc. Then it takes a long time for me to go back through and straighten it all out, after a couple of times of that, I figured there's got to be a better way. I stumbled on a good deal on Affinity and here I am. I guess it just amounts to you get what you don't pay for with Open Office. Libre does the same thing. Rich text format won't open in Affinity, either. Libre's "save as" file extensions don't look like they'd work, maybe, I don't know... I am not good at this and am about ready to give up. I did the attachment book's cover in Photoshop... it's a fun book about an island in Maine where I live. Have to go to Home Depot... I'll be back!

If printing to PDF then yes you would have the same problem you had before. When I googled it I came up with this video showing how to export to PDF, does this do the same thing as print to PDF does?

 

 

[Jon Coffin]

About the export to PDF, it just turns to machine language and gibberish, so weird. Photoshop has quirks like that, too, sometimes. I'm wondering what did you mean Wosven?  I didn't or wouldn't do that intentionally, don't think it's that...   How do you get tech support from Affinity?  They must have seen this before.   Jon

[Jon Coffin]

Well...  I have decided on a new approach to my Open Office struggle. I was able to save all my text as a, you guessed it, .txt text file, and I am going to start all over as I have some time on my hands. I have a lot of illustrations I don't mind working on again in Designer and Photo as I want to learn them, (I'm pretty good at Corel Draw and Photoshop), and Affinity stuff looks familiar, so I will add pix back as I go. My book is 110 pages, letter size 8.5 x 11, and 52,000 or so words.  But I am at a loss at how to place a big text file across that many pages. I can't find a video tutorial on it, and I haven't managed to get any text past the first page... Can't find anything specific in Help either. I have a comb binder so I don't want my pages side by side, I want them lined singularly vertically, number them consecutively, and print duplex. Anybody ever done that before?  This forum is great, and I am so appreciative of the help from you guys!  Jon

[Old Bruce]

16 minutes ago, Jon Coffin said:

Well...  I have decided on a new approach to my Open Office struggle. I was able to save all my text as a, you guessed it, .txt text file, and I am going to start all over as I have some time on my hands. I have a lot of illustrations I don't mind working on again in Designer and Photo as I want to learn them, (I'm pretty good at Corel Draw and Photoshop), and Affinity stuff looks familiar, so I will add pix back as I go. My book is 110 pages, letter size 8.5 x 11, and 52,000 or so words.  But I am at a loss at how to place a big text file across that many pages. I can't find a video tutorial on it, and I haven't managed to get any text past the first page... Can't find anything specific in Help either. I have a comb binder so I don't want my pages side by side, I want them lined singularly vertically, number them consecutively, and print duplex. Anybody ever done that before?  This forum is great, and I am so appreciative of the help from you guys!  Jon

Here is a starter document, place your text cursor in the big frame on Page 1 and then go to File Place and place your .txt file. Further instructions are in the file. When you place the pictures you can set a Text Wrap for getting the text to flow around the images.

Untitled.afpub

Edit: Oops, forgot to include a screen shot showing how to get started

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, Jon Coffin said:

But I am at a loss at how to place a big text file across that many pages.

Make one page, with a text frame of the appropriate size and placement. You may want to do that using a Master Page so you can easily change the placement and size on all the pages with one operation later if you need to.

On your one document page, select that text frame, then use File > Place, select your .txt file, and it should end up in the frame. If not, click on the frame.

Now you have one page, and all of your text in its frame, which will have a red onion on the lower right edge. Shift+Click on that icon.

(Bruce got his answer finished first )

[Old Bruce]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

(Bruce got his answer finished first )

How the colourful expression did that happen?

[Wosven]

You can also read about (smart) master pages to use them.

Another exaple file and links to video in this thread:

 

[Jon Coffin]

Hi everybody, Here's an Affinity update...  I was able to get all my text into my book project, 100 or so pages, by copy and paste, with the right font but text spaceings are much too cramped, (I figured out how to change that but would like to do it to all the text once globally (?), and there are instances where text doesn't flow very well, almost like each "paste" entry is it's own entity or object. I was able to link my pages together, but trying to backspace and return to fill spaces and then to place pix gives me problems, like gaps and jumping to the next page, hard to describe. Some other programs have "combine " features or "group"-ing items so they can be edited as one. Is there some command that will smooth up or mate up the text flow? Any command to select all text as one and edit as one? The program seemed to bog as I went along like it was getting low on memory, (I have 16gig of ram) and a very fast CPU. I was worried about closing and rebooting to refresh and have stuff not reassimillate or whatever. I wish I'd started out with this program in the beginning. The ability to switch over to Photo and edit photos is a dream come true, and my pix never looked better. Any one got any ideas?

[walt.farrell]

I still think you should either

• Save in RTF format from Open Office, if it will do that for you, and import the RTF file into Publisher. Or,
• Install LibreOffice, open your file in it, save in .docx format, and import that into Publisher.

But if you're going to copy/paste:

1. Select all the text in Open Office, and Copy.
2. Paste it all into one text frame in a new Publisher document, then shift+click on the linking icon and have Publisher reflow it onto as many pages as it takes.

[Jon Coffin]

Hello,  So... Moving right along, don't I wish....  I got all my text into nice pages with the font I want, all connected and stuff, and it all flowed out nice. But, there's always a but, it seems my character spacing and baselines are a little too tight the way they pasted in, kind'a hard to read and busy. I tried selecting one page of text at a time and applied the attributes I wanted in the character pallet, but they didn't flow out and I think some text was deleted or overwritten. I panicked, hit undo... Then, I drew a text box around all pages, selected "select all" and applied them again, and nothing seemed to happen. Somehow I missed the boat... This was for 60 or so pages and I had 120 available, with all pics removed, and around 52,000 words. I had this "save as" 'ed as an experiment, so no loss. Would love to get 'em all in one fell swoop so I can move on to the fun stuff. I'm all but done with this book and I want to move on with a book about a hermit on the side of a mountain here in Maine, and I can't wait to learn Affinity and use it for that, I never knew what I was missing running those clunker programs. So, I was wondering again, any ideas out there?

[Jon Coffin]

Oh, and what does the red onion mean when it replaces a page number halfway down one side of facing pages?

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, Jon Coffin said:

Oh, and what does the red onion mean when it replaces a page number halfway down one side of facing pages?

Screenshot, please.

[Wosven]

Hi @Jon Coffin   

Perhaps you can find the file I share in this thread usefull:

and tips explained in this one about using styles:

 

[Old Bruce]

11 hours ago, Jon Coffin said:

Oh, and what does the red onion mean when it replaces a page number halfway down one side of facing pages?

Just a guess. It is actually a red eye and it means there is overflow text. Your page number text frame may be too small for the page number to fit in it.

[Jon Coffin]

Thanks Bruce!! That was it, fixed it and worked great (text frame too small for page #). Figured out a lot of other stuff and got it all done, yay! But... Let me first say I print my own books with comb bindings: cheap, easy, pretty durable, and what I like most is they lay flat for easy reading, sell 'em in gift shops. Well, in Open Office my pages were laid out vertically, single file, and I was able to select 2 sided on my Brother laser printer (have 2 and love 'em) and it worked great. However, Aff Pub wouldn't offer 2 sided in it's print window and I tried printing 1-6 with 2 sided selected in my printer's print window, and they came out one sided. In my pages vane under Masters vane on the left, Page 1 is singularly on the right and pages 2 and 3 are side by side thence and so on. Is it because I need to have 1 and 2 side by side? If so, is there an easy fix or will I get the joy of fixing everything all colorful expletive over again? I'm almost there.............  I hope!

[Jon Coffin]

 

Well, in Open Office my pages were laid out vertically, single file, and I was able to select 2 sided on my laser printer and it worked great. However, Aff Pub wouldn't offer 2 sided in it's print window (have seen it in beta in a video) and I tried printing, say, 1-6 with 2 sided selected in my printer's print window, and they came out 6 sheets one sided. In my pages vane under Masters vane on the left, Page 1 is singularly on the right and pages 2 and 3 are side by side thence and so on. Is it because I need to have 1 and 2 side by side? If so, is there an easy fix or will I get the joy of fixing everything all colorful expletive over again? I'm a good aim when it comes to shooting myself in the foot {:^). All I see under print is single, flip long, and flip short....   not a clue what it means. Can anybody shed any light?

[Jon Coffin]

How do you send a screen shot?