Posts Tagged ‘LibreOffice’

Open remote files in LibreOffice (WebDAV)

Monday, April 10th, 2017

Although the feature “Open remote files” has been around in LibreOffice for a while, I only got it working recently, at least for WebDAV. Success on remote files on Sharepoint is still on the horizon, maybe I will follow up with another post once I get that working.

In Writer, go to the menu File, select Open Remote File…
Click Add service
Select WebDAV from the dropdown menu

If the WebDAV url for your host is https://host.yourdomain.orgorg/remote.php/webdav, then fill in the details as follows:

(Selecting “Secure connection” should change the Port number to 443. If it does not change, change it manually.)

After clicking OK, a dialogue box should ask for your usernamen and password, which can be saved if you want to.

If your username and password are correct, the usual Open File dialogue will show but the content is of course your remote location.

To save the file in your webdav folder again, select “Save to Remote Server”. You can choose to overwrite your existing file or save as a different file.

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LibreOffice: tough TOC troubles

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Yesterday I started writing a new Writer file and I wanted to include a TOC (“table of content” for the uninitiated). So my document was very basic and contained no formattting: A title per page, some text, a page break and the same footer on every page. Eight pages at most.

After finishing writing the text I applied the outlines: Heading for the file title, Heading 1 for the page titles and Default or Text body for the actual text.

And yet when inserting the TOC on the first page, the entry for page 2 listed not only the title of the page but also the whole text and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get rid off the text in the toc when updating the toc.

I triple-checked the formatting but it clearly said “Heading 1” for the title and “Text body” for the text. Bummer!

As always, Google to the rescue! (What did we ever do before Google?)

This entry in a OpenOffice forum finally provided the answer – apparently the formatting does not get properly automagically re-applied. An easy fix is to select the whole text (Ctrl+A) and remove all formatting (Ctrl+M) or menu Format –> Clear Direct Formatting so you can start all over again. This might be okay but if you have a large document, then starting all over again might not be an option for you. Also, apparently this does not *always* work so your mileage may vary.

Therefore, you should check the following things:

1) Outline Numbering

It’s available via Tools –> Outline Numbering… You see those levels 1 to 10 on the left? The same levels are used by the to TOC to determine what to include. For each level the Paragraph Style can be configured. If e.g. level 4 is assigned the Paragraph Style “Text body”, guess what will happen in the TOC?

2) Styles and Formatting

Press F11 to bring up the Styles and Formatting dialogue. Right-click any entry and select “Modify…” to see what Outline level in the tab “Outline & Numbering” is assigned. Specifically the styles “Default” and “Text body” should be not be assigned any Outline level from 1 to 10.
Although this dialogue sounds redundant to Outline Numbering, it is not. In this dialogue you can customize paragraph styles and also create new ones. In the Outline Numbering menu, you can “only” assign a paragraph style to a predefined level.

3) The paragraph style (aka “culprit” in my case)

It’s easy to get lost with outline this and format that. As you should know, simply pressing Enter opens a new paragraph that can be assigned a different style whereas pressing Shift+Enter twice will open op the same amount of space but not create a new formatting “realm” – the formatting of the previous paragraph will apply to the following lines too. And on one page you can’t really see what styles are applied to what paragraphs unless you click into the paragraphs.

So it’s easy to overlook a paragraph style. This also applies to an Outline level.

Click into the paragraph, right-click and select “Paragraph…” from the context menu or open the same dialogue via the menu Format –> Paragraph… In the tab “Outline & Numbering” (again! ^_^), an Outline level can be set. Depending on what you defined or what level you edited under “1) Outline Numbering” above, select an outline level that is not included in these ten levels to keep the text from appearing in the TOC.

Hope this helps!

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Timesheet template (calc, LibreOffice) for 2012

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Just in time (almost) for a new year I finished my basic timesheet for 2012 and if you’re interested, you can download it from here: timesheet-2012 (right-click and select “Save as…”).

What it contains:
-Months split into sheets, preceded by an overview sheet
-Adjustable settings for working hours per day
-All time fields are formatted to show a 24 hour clock.
-Weekends, holidays and days with reduced working hours are marked in different colors
-Swiss holidays resp. holidays for the city of Zurich (all in English)
-Some working days come with reduced working hours or half-days, these are included as well.

What it does:
-After you enter your starting time, finishing time and how much time you spent at lunch, the sheet will update the monthly total which in turn will update the total in the Overview sheet.
-Compares your daily efforts to the working hours per day and calculates a positive or negative overtime total, incl. red coloured negative overtime hours

What it does not do:
-Update itself for the next year. If you want the same timesheet for next year, you have to manually update the weekend color markings
-Adjust the holidays to different regions or countries. Frankly speaking, it’s all hard-coded 🙁
-Allow for several entries per day e.g. if you work from 8am to 10am, from 1pm to 3pm and finally from 7pm to 9pm you will have to enter e.g. starting time 8am / finishing time 9pm / break 07:00 (3 hours + 4 hours)
-Convert your spreadsheet to a nicely formatted, printable output.

Notes:
If you’re unhappy with my timesheet, feel free to use it as a basis for your own (hopefully) improved version. Here are some learning steps I had to take:

-Calculating time difference in Calc (or any other spreadsheet software?) is a bitch. The crucial point is the cell formatting, not the cell formula. Most likely, you will have to customize an existing format. Have a look at the formatting of any cell in the “+/-” columns.
-Colored results are easy. Again, have a look at the formatting of any cell in the “+/-” columns.
-Copying a formula from one cell to another  will automatically adjust the referenced cells in the formula. You probably knew that and I knew it too. To prevent this from happening: precede a cell reference with a “$” e.g. “=F16” should be written as “=$F$16”. Maybe you knew that as well. BUT! Did you also knew that references are also shifted per sheet when you copy sheets?
If you happen to have two sheets (“Overview”, “January”) with a reference of “=Overview.C18” in the cell A3 in the “January” sheet and you copy the “January” sheet, rename it “February” and place it before the last sheet, the “=Overview.C18” reference will automatically be adjusted to “=January.C18”. Apparently, these references don’t refer to a sheet’s name by default (as expected?) but refer to the relative order in which the sheets are ordered. In order to fixate a reference across sheets, use the “$” again e.g. “=Overview.C18” should be “=$Overview.$C$18”

Last but not least, you can password-protect your sheet. Select “Save As…” and check the “Save With Password” checkbox at the bottom of the Save dialogue.

HTH some…

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「お誕生日おめでとうございます！」の工作

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

Finally a hopefully creative output as promised in the blog’s title. At least, I think so.

Sometimes buying a card for a birthday is okay, but often something self-made says “I spent a lot of time because you’re worth it!” In my case, it also says “I was in a hurry again and couldn’t buy you anything so here’s something I made myself”.

For the following birthday message, you need the following things:
-LibreOffice
-A colour printer
-Scissors
-Hole puncher
-Sticky tape
-Some present wrapping cords (human entrails might be an acceptable substitute in some cultures)
-Two bookshelves to hang this up in between (or pillars, candelabers, one-legged giants – whatever floats your boat)

Self-made stuff is the best!

First, write your message in LibreOffice. Define the page as landscape, make every letter a different colour, raise the size of the letters to 168 and print all the pages.

Then, use your favourite browser to head over to http://www.openclipart.org/ and download whatever clipart you like. If possible, save the graphics in .svg format (scalable vector graphics) because it’s the easiest format to resize the clipart. Print them as well.

Cut out the letters in whatever form you want. I went for hearts for this one, but stars are also nice. If your friend gambles, consider diamonds or piks. If you want to befriend a monkey, banana-formed paper would help your advancements.

Cut out the clipart and glue or sticky-tape it to approprate places.

Punch a hole to the left and to the right of each page you cut out. Tie a double-knot into some present wrapping cord and insert them through the holes from behind and let the rest hang down in front. Place another knot in the front to prevent the pages from sliding apart too much. Also, gravity will pull everything slightly down. Best image a wide half-circle when punching the holes, this will save you some aggravation.

Use the sticky tape to hang up this ornamental writing wherever it can be seen but where it won’t accidentally behead people who run into it a full speed and at neck-level.

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