Creating a new document

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 2.x

Chapter 6: Getting Started with Writer

< Previous Section

Next Section >

• The Writer workspace
• Creating a new document
• Saving a document
• Working with text

• Cutting, copying, and pasting text
• Moving paragraphs quickly
• Finding and replacing text
• Inserting special characters
• Inserting dashes and non-breaking spaces
• Setting tab stops and indents
• Checking spelling
• Using AutoCorrect
• Using word completion
• Using AutoText
• Inserting notes

• Formatting text

• Using styles
• Formatting paragraphs
• Formatting characters
• Autoformatting
• Creating numbered or bulletted lists
• Hyphenating words

• Undoing and redoing changes
• Tracking changes to a document

• Recording changes
• Accepting or rejecting changes and comments

• Formatting pages

• Choosing a layout method
• Creating headers and footers
• Changing page margins

• Numbering pages

• Including the total number of pages
• Restarting page numbering
• Changing the format of page numbers

• Creating a table of contents
• Creating indexes and bibliographies
• Printing from Writer

< Previous Page

Next Page >

You can create a new, blank document in Writer in several ways:

• Press the Control+N keys. A new empty document opens. If you already have a document open, the new document appears in a new window.
• Use File > New > Text Document. The result is the same as pressing the Control+N keys.
• Click the New button on the main toolbar.

Creating a document from a template

You can use templates to create new documents in Writer. Templates serve as the foundation of a series of documents, making sure they all have a similar layout. For example, all the chapters in this book are based on the same template. By doing this, all the chapters look alike; they have the same headers and footers, use the same fonts, and so on.

A new OpenOffice.org installation does not contain many templates, but you can add new templates to your installation and use them for new documents. This is explained in Chapter 12 (Working with Templates). Many more templates can be downloaded from http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/ and other websites.

Once you have templates on your system, you can create new documents based on them by using File > New > Templates and Documents. This opens a window where you can choose the template you want to use for your document.

The example shown below uses a template called "Book" in the My Templates folder. Select it, then click Open. A new document is created based on the formats defined in the template.

Creating a document from a template