Hi, if this is the wrong place to ask this question, sorry.
I am looking for a way to do outlining like in word 2000. Everywhere I look I get pointed to outline numbering which is not what I am after. In word you can build up a skeleton of the document you want to make in outline view, with headings, subheadings, subsubheadings etc. Then flesh the structure out with content. When in outline mode if you move the headings around, the subheadings and text all move with it without cutting and pasting. Very useful indeed, I use this a lot. Does anyone know how exactly to do this in writer or am I stuck with word?
Thanks, Chris.

In open office 3.3.0 you start by clicking the navigator bar (F5). The same should be true about Libre Office.

I just saved the relevant help page and it is attached.

Please try and give me feedback since I haven't used it myself. But upfront it seems that there is a way.

This implies that usually the "subordinate" text will move with the heading.

OK

Attached Thumbnails

 

Format -> Styles and Formatting

Or just f11

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Yes that does half of it, but it is very messy. It looks like an afterthought by the developers who have never really used outline mode in Microsoft Word. It would take me about 3 to 4 times longer to achieve what I want using this. I wish I could show you how it works in Word, I doubt that many people know really how to use it. If the developers did they would not have done it this way. Writer just works like an HTML editor, not a wordprocessor. For example in Word outline mode, if you are at level one and hit enter you get another level one entry, in level 2 another level 2 and so on. In Writer it just gives you body text which you have to highlight, then format to the level you want and the same for all the other 10 levels making 10 times the work. Once you have done 10 times the work it will allow you to move things around, I just don't want to have to do 10 times the work in the first place when in Word, I only have to do it once. If you play with outline mode in Word for a while you will see how badly it is implemented in Writer.

O.B.T.W Someone replied saying jut hit F11, he/she obviously did not read my question or just uses vi/vim for wordprocessing :-)

Thanks for your reply anyway,

Chris.

Well, this is one thing that open office does differently (I mean after typing a new Heading 1, if you press enter, in OO, the next line is formatted as Text body while in MS it seems to remain as Heading 1) and so on.

I worked round it - as you probably did - by selecting what got typed in as Text Body and changing the attribute to Heading 1 and so on.

Please give feedback since Since I also have to interop a lot between MS and OO - but more in spreadsheets, I would be interested in your feedback.?

So what else doesn't work in the same way?

OK

I probably won't ever find out, as this behaviour means that OO or Libre is a non starter for me. Thank god for Wine, as Word 2000 works perfectly in Ubuntu. One of my other favorates that other people don't know is: In Word if you hold down control and alt you can select a column of text and copy or delete it. This saves converting a document from Word format to text, and running it through AWK to select a column and the converting it back into a Word processing format losing all formatting along the way. I have not found a way of doing this in Writer. Although I was brought up on vi, I can't be bothered with using it for word processing. Piping through spell, nroff, troff, LatEx etc. They had their day. When I first started in computing, nearly 40 years ago we didn't even have that, just paper tape and punched card. I must admit I am perfectly happy using vi even today for editing files while in the command line. It is faster when you know it than using a gui editor, but I prefer a gui for word processing.

Chris.

You can select a column in writer. If you've got the status bar at the bottom, click on STD until it turns to BLK; alternatively, you can toggle with Ctrl-Sh-F8.

I've never tried outlining: I think it's one of those things they teach in US high school, but not over here. Have you consulted the full Writer manual, as opposed to the help pages?

I seem to remember there's a outliner plugin for vim, but that's not what you want. There do seem to be other things, like
http://linuxappfinder.com/package/gnomeoutliner

I am impressed, especially by the ADD in the status bar, I had a play, now that IS useful, now its only for the developers to fix the outlining mode. If I can't find anything I will post it to the developers.

Chris.

From what I've seen, Libre Office does not have the same type of outlining feature. That said, I believe you will find what you are looking for in Abiword. They call it list mode and seems to work similar to the outline mode in MS Word.