Chose File → Save As . . . from the Main menu. In the Save As window, open the File Type drop-down menu and select the desired MS Office file format version; choices include:

See Figure 7-2 for details of the Save As window.

In your current document, click the small, red Export to PDF icon on the Menu, and the Export window opens with File Type preselected to Adobe PDF. Notice in Figure 7-13 that the Export window is similar to the Save As window.

Figure 7-13. The Export window

Enter the file name, choose a folder in which to save the new PDF file, and press the Save button.

You can achieve the same result by selecting File → Export as PDF and filling out the Export window as instructed above.

StarWriter offers a host of facilities for exporting or sending the current document to others through one or two mouse clicks. To send the current document as an attachment to an email, select File → Send → Document as Email . . . and this calls up the JDS Email and Calendar program, along with a new Compose window with the current StarWriter document already attached. (See Figure 7-14.) Fill in the address and subject lines, perhaps add a few words in the message window, and press the Send button.

Figure 7-14. Sending a document as email

This feature sends the file attached automatically in the native or default StarOffice open XML (.sxw) file format.

To send the current document as an Adobe PDF attachment to an e-mail, select File → Send → Document as PDF Attachment . . . The PDF Options window appears and lets you select a page range or the whole document, and the amount of file compression. The default compression setting, Print optimized, is fine for most purposes.

You can achieve a similar result in more steps by exporting a file to PDF into a folder and then manually attaching the PDF to an email message. For the inconvenience of a couple added steps, you get a copy of the distributed PDF file saved in your filesystem, which may be useful later.

A frame is a rectangular window you can insert into a document. It is much like a picture frame and is useful for holding formatted text, graphics, titles, sidebars, and other content that you want to set apart from the main text in your document. You can even put frames within frames.

To insert a frame into your document, place the cursor in the target location and select Insert → Frame from the Main menu. This opens the Frame dialog, where you can establish the dimensions, location, and other characteristics of the frame, as shown in Figure 7-15.

Figure 7-15. The Frame window

The Frame dialog gives you options for selecting the characteristics and features for your frames: size, anchor point, position, background color, word-wrap characteristics, links, and text flow, among other things.

Linking frames together permits text to flow automatically through several designated frames that have been placed into a document. For example, in a newsletter or article, you might wish to highlight a specific passage with a larger and more visible font to give the skimming reader a quick sense of the subject, to lure them into reading the whole thing. However, with limited space you may not be able to fit the whole highlighted passage into a single frame. In such a case, simply insert three frames and set them to link together so that the text you enter can flow automatically through the frames.

In the Frame dialog Options tab, shown in Figure 7-16, you have the opportunity to set the frame linkages by entering the names of the previous frame or next frame using the drop-down lists where all existing frame names are visible. Once the frames are inserted and linked, you can paste in the desired text and format it for best effect.

Figure 7-16. Linking text frames

If you view the Navigator (by pressing function key F5 or selecting Edit → Navigator), you can see a list of all the frames in your document. This permits you to jump through your document to specific frames quickly. See Section 7.2.7 for further information on navigating frames.

Formatting a paragraph with borders can be an effective way to structure information in a document. The bordered paragraph styles you create can be named, stored, and reused again and again.

To design a bordered block of text or paragraph for one-time use, select Format → Paragraph → Borders tab (Figure 7-18 from the Main menu.

Figure 7-17. The Paragraph window, Borders tab

Here, you can design the outlines, background colors or shading, drop shadow, spacing, and other features of your bordered paragraph.

To design a style for a bordered paragraph that you can reuse many times, use Styles. Press Ctrl+F11 to invoke the Styles Catalog and create a new paragraph Style using the Borders tab. Styles are explained in Section 7.2.3.6.

Sections are named areas in a document or blocks of text, graphics, or objects that you can use to prevent text from being edited, to show or hide text, and to repurpose text and graphics from other StarOffice documents. You can also use sections to employ a different column layout from the one prescribed by the current page style.

To insert a section into the current document, select the text or area you wish to be contained in the section and select Insert → Section from the Main menu. Figure 7-18 illustrates the facilities available in the Insert Section dialog, that permit you to link, write-protect, hide, or format the section and its contents.

A section contains at least one paragraph. When you select text and create a section, a paragraph break is automatically inserted at the end of the text.

You can insert portions from a text document, or an entire text document, as a section into another text document. You can also insert portions from a text document as links in another text document, or even in the same document. (See Figure 7-18.)

Figure 7-18. The Insert Section window

An inserted section is defined, like a header or footer in a StarWriter document, by fine gray lines, so it’s clear where the section begins and ends. To enter a new paragraph either just before or just after a section, click once, either before or after the section boundary, and press Alt+Enter.

For longer written work that is structured with chapters or headings, it is convenient to exploit StarWriter’s ability to autogenerate a Table of Contents. This feature is often used because manually generating tables and indexes is extremely time-consuming and repetitive—especially for larger documents.

To generate a table of contents that picks up the headings you’ve inserted into your document, choose Insert → Indexes and Tables and then, from the drop-down menu, Indexes and Tables . . . . once again. You can then insert a generic table of contents simply by pressing the OK button of the Insert Index/Tables window, as shown in Figure 7-19.

Figure 7-19. The Insert Index/Table window

You can generate a number of different kinds of indexes and tables, including:

From the Insert Index/Table dialog, you can designate the type of index or table, its layout, and other characteristics. You can design the number of heading levels involved and reformat the index or table to make it more legible, distinctive, and effective.

The interface to StarWriter’s Styles is a floating palette called the Stylist. It is invoked by pressing the function key, F11, or the Stylist On/Off button on the Function bar. The Stylist On/Off button looks like a page with a tiny hand on the lower-left corner. The default state of Stylist is to open in Paragraph Styles with the Automatic mode, as shown in Figure 7-21.

Figure 7-21. The Stylist opens to Paragraph Styles

Clicking through the icons on the Stylist’s toolbar, you begin to get a feel for the different styles that come with StarWriter out of the box.

One of the simplest things to do with the Stylist is to apply one of its default character styles. Click on the Character Styles icon (second from left, showing an A) at the top of the Stylist. This reveals all the default character styles available (the window is in “All” mode by default).

To apply a bold style, for example, highlight the bold character style (at the top of the list by default) with a single click and then click once on the paint can icon, third from the right at the top of the Stylist. (See Figure 7-22.)

Figure 7-22. The Stylist, ready to paint bold

When you invoke the paint can, your cursor turns into a little paint can tool that makes it easy to apply your chosen style with precision. Click on a word you wish to embolden, or draw the paint can cursor across some text. The paint can now give you a Midas touch, which makes bold everything on which you click. You can turn off the style by pressing F11, clicking on the X icon at the top right of the Stylist box, or choosing a different style.

There are too many styles to show conveniently at one time in the Stylist window, so there’s a way to view different subsets of all available styles.

The Stylist View Mode drop-down menu is at the bottom of the Stylist. Each mode shows a particular subset of styles you may be interested in at a particular moment. For instance, the view mode can limit you to seeing styles related to lists, or related to formatting a page for HTML (a web page). There is also a view mode, Custom Styles, to show styles that you or your colleagues have added to the document. If you decide you do want to see all styles available for your document, select All Styles in the menu.

What makes Styles View Modes even more complicated is that the different view modes vary according to the current style type in which you’re sitting. The Stylist View Modes available vary by context, according to which type of style you are in (whether Paragraph, Character, Frame, Page or Numbering Style). (See Table 7-4.)

We’ve already shown you how to change a particular paragraph or set of characters. You can make similar changes to styles. For instance, if you want list items indented differently from the default indentation used in a list style, you can edit the list style and make it indent each list the way you want. When you modify a style, it immediately takes effect on all existing items in the document, as well as items you create afterward. In this section, we’ll show you how to modify a style; a later section shows you how to create an entirely new style so you can do things the inventors of StarWriter didn’t anticipate.

To modify a style, press Ctrl-F11 to bring up the Style Catalog. The resulting window is shown in Figure 7-23. You can also invoke the Style Catalog from the Main menu by selecting Format → Styles → Catalog . . . .

Figure 7-23. The Style Catalog

The Style Catalog displays different styles, depending on the style set at the cursor’s current location. This can be very convenient; if you want to modify a certain style throughout an entire document, just place the cursor on one example of that style and proceed to modify it.

With the Style Catalog open, highlight the style you wish to alter and click the Modify button at the right of the Style Catalog window. This opens the Style Settings window for the style highlighted in Figure 7-23 called “Normal, Body.” The Style Settings window is shown in Figure 7-24: here you can change any characteristic that is available for modification. The characteristics you can adjust include:

Figure 7-24. The Style Settings window

An alternative way to modify a style is to right-click on the style in the Stylist and choose among the choices New, Modify or Delete. When you click Modify, the Style Settings window opens and you can make the desired changes.

Short of creating a whole new style from scratch, you can quickly change an existing Style by applying the format of a selected character, paragraph, or page.

To update a particular style, press the function key, F11, to open the Stylist. Next, click the icon of the style type you want to update: Paragraph, Character, or Page. Then, click once in the document in the place where you want to copy/update the style from. For example, you may be “borrowing” paragraph formatting that you had previously applied manually. Next, in the Stylist click on the style name you wish to update. Then, finally, click the Update Style icon at the far right of the Stylist toolbar.

Although StarWriter comes with many predefined Styles, specialized documents sometimes have elements that don’t fit into one of the predefined styles. StarWriter makes it easy to create new Styles, too.

To add a new style to the Stylist, first open the Stylist by pressing F11. Next, pick a style type and highlight an existing style in Stylist that’s similar to the new one you wish to create (if such a style exists). Right-click that style and select New . . . . This opens the Style Settings window shown in Figure 7-24. Here you can set all the characteristics you want for the new style, including its category.

There are two alternative ways to add a new style. One is by clicking the New Style from the Selection button, which is the second button from the right, at the top of the Stylist. This opens the Create Style window, where you can choose a new style from the given list and enter a name for the new style, as shown in Figure 7-25.

Figure 7-25. The Create Style window.

Perhaps the best way to create a style that doesn’t closely resemble any existing style is to press Ctrl-F11 to open the Style Catalog. Then click the New . . . button on the right side. This opens the Style Settings window where you can make all the desired selections to create your new style.

Some documents contain multiple page formats for such things as title, chapter, endnote, and footnote. To change the page style midway through a document, start by inserting a manual page break where you need to make the change. Place the cursor just after the last character on the page before the change and select Insert → Manual Break . . . from the Main menu. This opens the Insert Break window, shown in Figure 7-26, where Page Break is the default type of break. Before pressing OK to insert the manual page break, select the page style you want to follow the break. You may need to create a new page style to accommodate the new formatting.

Figure 7-26. The Insert Break window

If you need to have the headers or footers change somewhere within your document, insert a manual page break and deploy a different page style with different header or footer content or formatting. Keep in mind that you may need to create a new page style to accommodate the different headers or footers. See Section 7.2.3.6 for information on deploying a different page style.

This feature is useful in making transitions between different sections of a document, such as from the front matter (where pages are often numbered with lowercase italic Roman numerals) to the beginning of the text (where numbering may start over again from 1.

Follow the guidelines given in the section Section 7.2.3.8 The window that asks you to confirm that you want to insert a manual page break includes a check box labeled “Change page number”; if you check this box, a page number appears in the small box beneath. You can type in a new number or press the arrow buttons to increase or decrease the number. See Figure 7-26, where the spinner is located below the Style drop-down menu.

Mirrored page formatting is also known as right- and left-page formatting, or odd- and even-page formatting. It is used for two-sided printing in printed books such as this one, or other bound documents. The mirrored page format is also useful for any long document that will be printed on a two-sided or duplex printer. To print in duplex mode, see the section, “Advanced Printing,” later in this chapter.

This formatting technique employs different Page Styles that alternate on the left and right page so that page numbers are located at the outer edge of the pages. Often, other information such as chapter and book title are also moved from one side of the header or footer to the other, to achieve a mirrored effect.

Creating a work in the mirrored page format requires adding two new Custom Styles, described in Section 7.2.3.6. We’ll repeat the directions here, customizing them for mirrored pages.

Figure 7-27. Style Catalog: adding a new page style

Figure 7-28. The Page Style settings window

Figure 7-29. The Page Style, Page tab

Having established these two new styles, go back to the Style Catalog and modify both styles to ensure that the Next Style box in each one is set to the other. For example, in the custom style called “Mirrored Right Page,” the Next Style drop-down menu should read, “Mirrored Left Page”; and in the custom style called “Mirrored Left Page,” the Next Style drop-down menu should read, “Mirrored Right Page.” See Figure 7-30, which shows sample Style settings for the Mirrored Right Page style.

Figure 7-30. Designating the Next Style

You can transfer styles into the current document from another document or template by selecting Format → Styles → Load . . . . from the Main menu. This calls up the Load Styles window, shown in Figure 7-31. Here you can specify a file containing the styles you want, and load any or all of these styles by checking the desired boxes along the bottom of the window.

Figure 7-31. The Load Styles window

Any of the documents you’ve created in your file system can perform as a template. Quite often users repurpose old files such as office memoranda, fax cover sheets, or business letters, and use them to create new documents by simply replacing a few key words. This practice is fine and works well for many people; however, users could be more productive if they took full advantage of StarWriter’s template management facilities and particularly its linkage abilities further below.

To create a new template, open a new text document (or use an existing document from your file store) and make the necessary formatting adjustments that you’d like to have in your template. Now, select File → Templates → Save . . . from the Main menu. This calls up the Templates window, shown in Figure 7-33, which permits you to name the new template and select a template folder or Category in which to store it. You can create any number of your own personal templates and store them this way.

Figure 7-33. The Templates window

Files saved as templates this way automatically have the .stw file extension appended.

You can edit or generally treat a template file just like any other; however, we recommend editing a template with special care, since it can be easy to open a template file and then save it by mistake as a normal StarWriter .sxw file—which would interfere with the templates linkages and storage location.

One direct way to edit a template is to select Launch → StarOffice 7 from the Launch menu. This opens up the Templates and Documents window directly in the Default folder. Click around the Templates folders to find the template you want to edit. Click once to highlight it. This lights up the Edit button at the bottom of the window, second from the left. Clicking the Edit button opens your template, ready for edits. When you save via this route, the proper directory path and file format appear automatically in the Save dialog, so there’s less opportunity to mishandle your template inadvertently.

You can also save any of your own documents as a template or, later, move them into one of the Templates folders/categories using the Template Manager. Access the Template Manager from the Main menu by selecting File → Templates → Organize . . . . (See Figure 7-34.)

Figure 7-34. The Template Management window

You can browse documents in the righthand pane of the Template Manager and drop them into folders in the templates pane on the left.

Template Manager also offers facilities for importing, updating, and adjusting printer settings associated with t emplates.

Template files are linked to documents derived from those templates. When you have a large number of documents in your file system that were created from a certain template (call them “subdocuments”), you can update the formatting of all subdocuments in one stroke by altering the Styles or general formatting of the source template file. Then, each time you open one of the subdocuments, you are prompted to accept or reject the formatting alterations that were made to the source template, as illustrated in Figure 7-35.

Figure 7-35. Okay the format changes to a subdocument

Linkage is broken, however, if you later save the source template file via File → Save As or via the Save icon on the Object bar; so you should always save a template file via File → Templates → Save . . . if you want it to remain linked to its subdocuments or to keep using it as a template.

As mentioned earlier, the standard blank document that opens up when you select File → New → Text Document from the Main menu is based on a default template file that is saved in the Templates and Documents - New Document window. (See Figure 7-36.)

Figure 7-36. Templates and Documents - New Document window

To change the default template for all new text documents, first create a new template with the desired formatting (and add custom styles, if desired), as described earlier in “Creating a New Template.” Save it by selecting File → Templates → Save . . . (Figure 7-34, enter the filename (let’s call it newdefault), and click once on Default in the Categories pane at the left to save it in that folder.

Then, go into the Template Management window by selecting File → Templates → Organize . . . and double click in the left pane to open up the Default folder, where you find your new template file, newdefault. Click once upon it to highlight newdefault and click on the Command button at the far right to view the drop-down choices. Select Set As Default Template at the bottom of the list.

To restore the original Text Document default template, simply click the Command button once again and select Reset Default Template → Text Document.

Autopilot is like Templates on steroids. It offers a way of creating customized documents that are much like templates, but it is a wizard that takes you through a few steps to customize the new document rapidly before launching it. Autopilot is, therefore, a useful tool for first-time users who wish to get up and running in StarWriter quickly.

Access Autopilot via File → Autopilot, where you see a drop-down list, as shown in Figure 7-37.

Figure 7-37. The Autopilot

Autopilot is a wizard that takes you through various steps to create an individual document from a generous list of different document types:

The resulting documents may not come out perfectly suited to your taste, but they are a good way to get up and running in document creation quickly. (See Figure 7-38.)

Figure 7-38. Creating a fax document with Autopilot

Autopilot also contains several different utilities for converting documents and currency figures within documents, as well as importing old StarOffice (5.2) database files and address book contact information.

To turn on Changes Tracking, select Edit → Changes from the Main menu and single-click both Record and Show. Once turned on, these settings “travel” with the document when it is saved, and stays on until someone unchecks them and saves the document again.

To compare two different documents, open the first document and select Edit → Compare Document . . . . This opens the Insert dialog, where you can select or type in the name of the second document. Click the Insert button at the bottom right of the window. The insert procedure merges the two documents and shows the results, using the changes tracking feature, as if you had started with the second document and edited it to create the first. Typical results are shown in Figure 7-40.

Figure 7-40. Differences display as red-lined content

StarWriter’s version control features allow you to keep track of numerous versions of a document from within a single file. This both saves disk storage space and provides ready and quick access to older versions of a document. Thus, if you make edits that you later regret, you can back them out. If somebody asks when a change was made, you can review earlier versions of the document.

Version control is accessed via the Main menu under File → Versions . . . . This launches the versions window. See Figure 7-41.

Figure 7-41. The Versions window

To save a new version of a document in which you’re working, choose File → Versions . . . from the Main menu and click the Save New Version button at the top left in the versions window. The Insert Version Comment window (Figure 7-43 pops up, permitting you to enter a few phrases to remind yourself and your collaborators later what changes you made and why. Documenting what you’ve done here lets you also distinguish versions later, without having to open each one.

Figure 7-42. The Insert Version Comment window

To open a specific version of a document listed in the versions window, choose File → Versions . . . , highlight the desired version, and click the Open button. This opens the respective version of the document as a read-only file. You can, if you wish, save this version as a separate document, with no reference to other versions, past or future, by using the File → Save As . . . menu option.

To track and show changes from one version to another, click the Compare button in the versions window. This highlights all version differences (just as when using the Edit → Compare Document feature) in a document and gives you the chance to accept and reject each change.

Table 7-6 is a chart that may be useful to users who take full advantage of the function keys in MS Office and need to reacclimate to the slightly different default function key mappings in StarOffice.

The function key mappings reflected in Table 7-5 are merely default settings. Users and system administrators are free to change them to reflect their personal or organizational taste or habit by selecting Tools → Configure . . . → Keyboard. (See Figure 7-45.) Adjustments to the function key defaults can be helpful in the desktop migration process.

Figure 7-45. Configuration window, Keyboard tab

There are well more than 12 functions that can be mapped to the 12 F-keys. To Microsoft’s credit—or reflecting their well-documented obsession with features—MS Office 2000, as one example, provides a total of seven different modes for its function key associations. Their modes include:

StarOffice offers four modes—F[1-12], SHIFT + F[1-12], Ctrl + F[1-12], and SHIFT + Ctrl + F[1-12]—which is still overkill for most users, and yet leaves many openings for custom keyboard mappings that can aid speed and productivity.

To alter your default keyboard mappings, select Tools → Configure . . . and click on the Keyboard tab in the Configuration dialog. (See Figure 7-45.) Here, in the Shortcut keys pane, select the function key whose mapping you want to change. Next, select a Category and Function from those respective panes in the lower half of the Configuration dialog and click the Modify button. This effectively remaps the function performed by the function key you selected. Repeat the procedure for as many function keys, as desired.

In the upper-right corner of the Configuration dialog, note the two radio buttons, one for StarOffice and the other for StarWriter. The latter one is selected by default. If you want to alter keyboard mappings for all modules of StarOffice and not just for StarWriter, click once on the StarOffice radio button and follow the procedure above.