How to keep columns set at certain width in Libre Office Writer 4.2.7.2 from changing
 

Build 2: Using Linux Mint17 Cinnamon homebuilt AMD Fusion 8gbDDR3
Welcome to Libre Office Writer hell! Near as I can tell the columns are changing at will and Font properties also. Is it program or Hardware. Seems like memory holds on to settings when they are changed and either revert back or change a setting somewhere else in the table. Some times table gets corrupted beyond repair and has to be deleted to start over. Fonts change at will too. Help if you can Thanx

Have you tried Abiword? The things I like about it are that its small and simple. You can't use it to lay out tables or multi-column layouts or anything, but for just writing text it's great.

As far as i know Libreoffice has not changed this

it is still the same as in Microsoft office excel ( pre ribbon)
set the column and row ( or field) properties in the menu

I think it is an over all worse piece of garbage. Nothing was very easy to use and it couldn't show me the whole page that I set up. There were distortions as in Libre and there was this damn lag where the page disappeared after each setting change.

What does this mean?

you set the the "calc" spreadsheet column width
the same way as you set it in Microsoft's excel

r-click "A"
and format cells
or
set width

this has not changed in YEARS

have you tried to use the thing Microsoft calls "office 365 "

THAT is garbage

OpenOffice and the fork Libreoffice
have a GUI that works very much like MS office 2002 to 2008

Dropped M$ at XP and never looked back!!! Linux is just as challenging but in different ways.
Never used any of that M$ stuff for any length of time. I used the mouse to click and drag column lines and the Table menu columns to do finer adjustments. The changes had propensity to change them selves from the way I set them it seemed. I just decided to redo the Table one page at a time and try protecting the cells of that page after I got that part to where I wanted it then protect it. Do the next and protect it and so on and seems to work but that may change. On page 3 or 4 expect the unexpected when working with computers?
You see I've never done this before and learning and doing as I go is one of the challenges of having brain injuries. I suspect losing settings could my ram or hard drive that is bad but not bad enough to get warranty and I'm too disabled with Dementia to even consider proving it. Just do work arounds like it's been ever since leaving some brains on the Freeway.

Not that I don't use bad language, however I try to avoid it online in help forums. Just a suggestion that eventually it may cause some problems if you escalate use of that.

So John VV is right, the properties for cells are the same in Microsoft Excel as they are for pretty much all of OpenOffice or LibreOffice or any other Linux based spreadsheet programs which I've used. I myself use CTRL-1 to get cell properties and have zero problems with them. You're saying that fonts change at will and tables get corrupted beyond repair.

Any chance you these documents are swapping between users viewing/editing them on Windows and then you doing more in Linux? Because I've seen that problem and alleviated it by using more open document formats. For Word it's ODT, I don't know the Excel/Spreadsheet alternative, but I'm sure there is one.

If you are seeing these exclusively on your system, with only you as the editor. A suggestion is to try and save backups each time you do a new major step. Like if you transform a table, or something.

And not to project gestures into your hands, but my honest experience is that sometimes people either type ahead, type erratically, or mouse like crazy, if they see a delay, they continue to type away and then suddenly the system goes haywire as it catches up. Had a boss who did that, Windows was slow, he'd double click and do that about a hundred times because an email wouldn't open. 10 minutes later that email opened a hundred times, he'd swear and hold down his power button for 10 seconds. About 45 minutes later we'd get to read the email and none of us could up and leave because it was the boss.

So if you're being impatient and trying to do tons of stuff and then it all goes to (blank) and a handbasket. Have you tried to make sure each step of what you're doing gets done, save the file, and then proceed to your next step?

I really don't have much trouble with spreadsheets in Linux.

I take in large data sets, we have 32 channel HEX data sets, 70 Hz data, hour long traces, therefore we get a comma separated file, 32+ columns - like we have to delete the extra protocol fluff and just keep the 32 channels of data, it's HEX-ASCII, so we have to to HEX2DEC on every cell. 70 Hz is 70 times per second, an hour is 3600 seconds. So we have 3600 x 70 lines of 32-column data in our file, or more; it depends how long they ran the trace for. We then plot this stuff, or transform rows via mathematical alterations because the raw data is just that and our product will perform computations with it, we can test, or verify, or stage similar computations in a spreadsheet and that's how we design new methods to alter our software.

Throughout all that, I don't lose data unless I make a typing mistake. Further, the original CSV file I imported from is left there in case I do make such a mistake. Also, if I do a huge amount of transformation work, I save an intermediate copy so that I don't lose a few hours of work.

Again, not saying you're a bad typist or not proficient at what you're doing. But here you're just loudly proclaiming that things are a train wreck. I do not have that experience. So what specific problems do you have? Can you cite something repeatable? Like if you have a data set of larger than some size and it always causes a crash or something?

=============================================================================================
Sorry I quote the whole message to help me remember.
Am I using a spread sheet? I don't think I know how to. Would like to but too confusing. All I do is use Tables inside of Openoffice Writer. And I think I solved the erratic changes by working on the project one page at a time then protecting the cells of that table when it is as near perfect as possible the move on to doing the next page doing the same. Before I protect I make a copy of what I did for the next page and edit that page with [copy and paste, find/replace, and mouse moving columns and using Table properties]. Before I started protecting cells I was working on the project with all 9 pages created into 12 separate tables one for each month. One thing that I remember was while moving a column line in one separate table below I saw the column move in the table above at the same time and line in second table would get crossed and second table corrupted.The project is similar to a Calendar. 21 Cells 7 - three column bunches across the top and 4-5 rows deep. first column of three contains month,date,day, and year/second columns has am at top and pm at bottom of cell for marking with a felt pen that I took meds/thirt columns has meds top to bottom=3 in am and 2 in pm. third med is inderlined to seperate it from pm. See attached example: While I was trying to attach xmeds while trying to change it from odt to pdf or png or jpeg open office 2 out of 3 times gave me a different file than xmeds that had already been changed to that extension. Do computers get possessed?

I fresh installed Mint 17.1 and tried working with open office from there to do the med table using cells within a cell to hold data safe from changes.
I tried doing the form with 4 cells split out of one cell every third cell in the 21 call row and encountered so many things happening that I decided to quit that. Guess I don't know any rules to Tables. I figure if it lets you do it that it should work. I'm surprised I got a near workable on doing it this way on other machine. Any way I got one useable form not trying to get fancy and protecting the cells after they were completed. I give up no more time and energy to continue while a form that will work is available. Thanx and L8R SW marking it as solved

For either this, or your similar thread question the best suggestion is to use the spreadsheet versus a table in the writer. In fact, the spreadsheet is near close to the table in the write application, but also WAY better. The write application places a table inline with the text and tries to consider the whole table block as this big chunk which is the equivalent of a picture or some type of embedded content within the written document. The write application is really for paragraph writing. Placing a table within it is really in my humble opinion, a nice enhancement, but not a major functional part of the write application. You in fact can embed a spreadsheet within a write document as well, and the result is also similar, the spreadsheet is considered to be embedded content. Suggest you look at the spreadsheet because really, they are "tables" in the respect which you are using a table.

==================================================================================================== =================

Thanx, know of any crash courses for doing this as a spreadsheet? I tried inputting the data in Libre Office Calc and it seemed like it was going to take a~lot more space and work. If you haven't read my profile I've had several brain injuries with one Craniectomy aka "Brain surgery" to remove broken skull pieces. And the old thinker just isn't as adaptable as it once were or wuz. Lots of known right side Cortical scar tissue which may function on a retard level. Things really had to get scrambled when I hit that '73'Ford LTD rear corner with my right Homda prelude passenger door at 100mph. A friend said at least '30Gs'!!! Got pics if you wanna see the LTD bumper several inches from the ground. [no prob to scan and send] Lost my dominant eye and that probly didn't help the scenario. Had to learn alot of tings over at first but it came quick like walk and talk and yet wake up every day having to do the same but I manage slowly. Abstract is difficult to impossible. Concrete is bettuh. Lotzuh PTSD symptoms and meds make me worse. Goals, desires, and feelings problematic too. That's the scoop. Need a structured and prompting environment to function with any speed.
I did manage to finish Chiropractic College and practice for 20 years six full time and 14 part time... and even Teach at Palmer for a year. During School I managed to work 100+ hrs. a week and carry 34 Semester hours. Never knew how to study before but accident made me learm how to memorize again. After TBI work hours dropped to around 90. didn't meant to be a downer. But that's why I'm not catching on very fast here. The only way I can do command line is copy and paste with maybe a few modifications. Learning new and doing new is no longer a quick deal. Can take up to 4 years for me to be able to use it. I think Microsoft had something to do with this crippling too. I cut my teeth on it but got switched to Linux cuz it cost less. Had a chemical injury in there too while in practice that really took a toll on the memory also. I'm chemical sensitive more now too. I think the form I've created will function fine but I can still play with the spreadersheet cuz never know when it will come in handy! Thanx again and catch ya ll8r #;))SW that is brain affeced effected emodicon!

You have LibreOffice, therefore you have LibreOfficeCalc, try running that. Basically you'll see the cells for entering stuff. Start small and see what you can accomplish. To me the default cells are basically a table. Over time you'll learn how to resize rows or columns to suit what you need. Perhaps there are books online or other resources to give you organized help with things like Word tables or Excel which you can translate into LibreOffice. I'm merely a user offering suggestions so not really writing an all encompassing blog or article to describe the full details of how to use those packages. These tools also offer help.

What I do when learning the unfamiliar is I dive in and try to use it fundamentally and when I finally need to do something that is not intuitive, I search for specifcally how to do that one thing. I used to try and practice ways to recall that advice, but I've learned over the years that if it's a one-of which I'll rarely ever do again, then why bother? If it's something I'll use everyday, OK I work at remembering it, and eventually I do remember it. But everyone's different, per your comments which you've mentioned.

Best of luck.

==========================================================================================
Thanx

Herez the finished product!

Column widths and fonts keep changing
 

Any ideas as to why the column widths and fonts change after I set them and exit? Once I layout the page and return everyone is reset.