How do I make it so that when I add lines to a page, it doesn't make the text on the next page move further down? I'm trying to make sure my sections will start on the same page as I typed them when a Windows user opens the Word document (which is what I will be exporting this as) in their Microsoft Office. I'm using OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 on Ubuntu 8.10.

You alter the font size in your Open Office docement, or better still get your colleagues to use Open Office.

The fonts sizes differ when opening in Microsoft Office so choosing a smaller size is one way to fix this, as is adjusting margin sizes.

Thanks for the reply.

It's a professor of mine, so if she asks for it in Word format, that's what I must give her. I've been getting away with using Google Docs with great success for minor assignments, but this particular paper needs to be in APA style, which Google Docs has trouble with (due to limited header/footer functionality). So I've busted-out OpenOffice.org and installed the msttcorefonts package in order to get Microsoft fonts. Adjusting font sizes wouldn't help, as there is no telling how different the document will display on the professor's Windows box. If her display makes the text scroll down (or up) by even one line, the whole appearance is ruined, which can cost me points.

I think I figured it out, though. On the first line of each page, I right-click and select Paragraph. Then I click on the Text Flow tab, and checkmark the Insert box of the Breaks section. I figured this out by opening a genuine Word document (which displayed this behavior) in OpenOffice.org and then looking for differences in the configurations between that Word document and mine. Hopefully OpenOffice.org will export this page break thing smoothly to Word format. I'll need to find a Windows box to test before submitting my paper.

If I have understood your question correctly, you are in the right area with 'flow control'. i think however that you should be playing around with 'do not split paragraph', 'orphan control' and 'widow control'.

If you get this right, the text should not 'slip' line by line onto the next page. It will still slip paragraph by paragraph onto the next page, and I can't see what, ultimately, you can do about that, short of not adding the text. I don't know whether this solves your problem or just makes it happen in bigger chunks...