How to number pages with Open Office

You have decided to replace Office with OpenOffice, a well-known free and open source alternative to Microsoft’s suite, but you can’t find the function to number document pages. After several attempts, you have almost decided to let go but, as a last resort, you still want to do a web search to see if you find the information you are looking for. Fortunately for you, you have come to this tutorial of mine, where I will provide you with everything you need to succeed in your intent!

In fact, OpenOffice integrates all the main functions of Microsoft Office and page numbering is certainly no exception. With a couple of clicks in the right places – we will see shortly which ones – you will be able to number the pages with OpenOffice in a completely automatic way, giving a professional touch to all the documents created with this productivity suite. Would you like to know more? Well, then read on, you will find everything explained below.

The procedure we are about to see together is also valid for LibreOffice, another suite of office programs born from a “rib” of OpenOffice, but we will discuss this more in the second part of the tutorial. For the moment let’s focus on the version of Writer included in OpenOffice and find out how to number the pages in the latter. The steps to take are the same on all software platforms: Windows, macOS and Linux. So, what are you waiting for to get to work? In the meantime, I just have to wish you a good read!

Index

• How to number pages in OpenOffice
  • How to number pages with OpenOffice not from the first
• How to number pages in LibreOffice

How to number pages in OpenOffice

The first thing you need to do to be able to number pages with OpenOffice is to start OpenOffice Writer through its icon in the Windows Start menu or in the macOS Launchpad . Once this is done, if you need to create a new document, on the main screen click on the Text Document item ; if you want to open a text file already on your PC instead, click on the Open button in the center of the screen and choose the document to open.

Now, to be able to number the pages in OpenOffice , what you have to do is to enable the area for inserting the page numbering: in the header or in the footer . Let’s see how to activate these areas. First, click on the Format item in the top menu and select the wording Page.

In the screen that is shown to you, click on the Footer tab and then activate the Enable footer box , to enable the footer area in the document. To enable the header instead, select the Header Row tab and then check the Enable Header Row checkbox . In both cases, press the OK button to confirm the changes.

Now that you’ve activated these areas in your document, let’s move on to inserting page numbers. I warn you that the procedure is the same whether you want to act in the header or in the footer. Let’s look at this last area, which is where page numbers are usually entered.

Go to the first page of the document and click in the rectangular field that appeared in the lower area. Once this is done, from the Insert menu at the top, select the item Field command> Page number . By doing so, the page numbers will be automatically added to all pages of the document.

By default, OpenOffice places the number of pages on the left margin of the sheet. To move the text to the right or to the center, select the number on any page with the mouse and click on the text orientation button located in the Writer toolbar at the top or right. In the same way you can change the font of the character and the formatting of the page numbers through the appropriate functions in the toolbar. All changes are automatically made to the numbers of all pages in the document.

If, on the other hand, you want to add the total pages in the document to the side of the page numbering, from the Insert menu at the top select the items Field command> Number of pages . You may want to insert this tag to the right of the page number, perhaps separating them with a symbol, such as a slash ( / ) or a dash ( – ).

Another change you can make concerns the style of the page numbers. For example, if you want to know how to number the pages of the thesis with OpenOffice with a particular style, double-click on a page number present in the header or footer to display the editing screen of the numbering type for the pages: instead of the classic numbers you can use the Roman ones or letters , just to give you some examples.

How to number pages with OpenOffice not from the first

Do you want to know how to number pages in OpenOffice skipping the first ones ? Nothing easier. First what you need to do is place the page numbering in the header or footer. In this regard, follow the same instructions I gave you in the previous chapter, also taking care to change the position, the font style and the general formatting of the page numbering.

Once this is done, double-click on the number of the first page, so as to display the screen for editing the numbering field. In the area below, locate the Correction box and type a number value preceded by the – sign (the hyphen ): if you want to number the pages on OpenOffice starting from the second , type the value -1 and then press the OK key to confirm.

If you want to start from the third page instead, enter the value -2 . In the case of the fourth page, on the other hand, you will enter the value -3 . In short, the value to be typed corresponds to the number of pages to be skipped, starting from the first.

How to number pages in LibreOffice

If instead of downloading OpenOffice on your PC, you preferred to use LibreOffice , it is possible to proceed with the numbering of the pages of a document with a procedure very similar to the one seen in the previous chapter . If you were to ask yourself what the difference is between the two suites, you should know that they are very similar, as LibreOffice was born as a “rib” (free and open source) of OpenOffice.

Personally I prefer LibreOffice rather than OpenOffice and I know that many people are of the same opinion, also thanks to the greater care in the support of this suite and the numerous additional features, as well as compatibility with projects made with Microsoft Office. Having said that, however, let’s get to the heart of the matter and see together how to perform the page numbering.

Going into more detail, to number the pages with LibreOffice you have to open a text document in the latter: in the main screen press the Open file button , to search for a working document already present in the PC, or click on the Document Writer item , to create a new workspace.

With that done, you need to edit the footer or header. To do this, click in the bottom area of ​​the document (the area beyond the side gray marks ) to access the footer. To act on the header instead, click in the top area of ​​the document. If you have followed this procedure correctly, the area with the name Footer or Header will be highlighted : click on these labels to access the editing of the area.

Now, using the Insert menu at the top , select the Page Number item or click on the Field Command> Page Number items . If you want to add the total pages of the document next to the page number, select the items Field command> Page count . Use symbols of your choice to separate the number of individual pages with their total.

To change the style of the numbering, double-click on the number of any page and choose the style you prefer from the screen that opens: you can use letters, Roman numerals, etc. From the same screen you can also indicate the page from which the numbering should start, just type a negative value in the Correction field (eg -1 to start the numbering from the second page, -2 to start it from the third page and so on).

If you want to change the alignment or font of the page numbers, select any of them and use the text alignment or font change commands on the Writer toolbar. All changes will be reflected automatically on all pages of the document.