Learn LibreOffice Writer

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Introduction

LibreOffice Writer is the free and open-source text editor application of the LibreOffice software package. Writer is a text editor similar to Microsoft Word.

Basic information

ICT Competency	ICT for creating generic resources
Educational application and relevance	LibreOffice Writer is a software used for creating (including writing, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) text resources. Apart from entering and editing text, you can insert images and links also.
Version	LibreOffice Writer is also available on the Windows (visit download LibreOffice on Windows to install LibreOffice on a Windows system) and Macintosh operating systems. This tool has no specific configuration requirements but in this application you can use many extra features by installing extensions
Other similar applications	Microsoft Word, OpenOffice writer, Google Docs
The application on mobiles and tablets	Collabora Office for Android and for iOS
Development and community help	The Document Foundation Community help

Overview of features

LibreOffice Writer lets you design and produce text documents that can include graphics, tables, or charts. In this application you can save the documents in a variety of formats, including the standardized Open Document Format (ODF), Microsoft Word format(.doc), or HTML. Here you can easily export your document to the Portable Document Format(PDF).

Installation

For Ubuntu

The application is part of the Ubuntu custom distribution.
In case you do not find it on your computer, you can install by choosing “LibreOffice” in Ubuntu Software Centre
If you would like to install through the terminal follow these steps below:
1. Open terminal by clicking (Ctrl+Alt+T),
2. Once Window page is open, in front of dollar($) symbol just type below command.
3. sudo apt-get install libreOffice-writer

For Windows

Download LibreOffice windows installer from below
1. Click here for the 32-bit version
2. Click here for the 64-bit version
If you are unsure which Windows version you have, press Win+Pause to open your system properties window. The LibreOffice Main Installer download page can be selected with a built-in help file for your language:
Double-click on download "LibreOffice_..._Win_x64.msi" file to begin installation
It will start downloading "LibreOffice" into your computer (by default browser will save the files in "Downloads" folder in your system)

Click Yes if it ask your permission to allow this program make change to the computer,The Installation Wizard Welcome dialog box opens advising that the installation process is about to be started. Click “Next >”

Another dialog box opens, giving you a choice whether you want a default installation, or whether you want to choose special locations and components. If you want a default installation, just press “Next >”. If you want to make special choices, click on “Custom” and then press “Next >”.The Custom Setup enables changes to the features that will be installed. If you would like to install the spelling dictionaries, hyphenation rules, thesauri and grammar checkers:

Click Expand Optional Components
Click Expand Dictionaries

Setup type
Select program features

Another dialog box opens, inviting you to choose whether to open Microsoft Office documents with LibreOffice. By default, this feature is not enabled. If you want LibreOffice to open Microsoft Office files (documents, spreadsheets and presentations), put a check mark in all four checkboxes.Another dialog box opens, asking you whether:

A shortcut to open LibreOffice should be placed on your desktop. The default option is to create a shortcut.
To load LibreOffice during system start-up.

File type selection
Ready to install the program

Keep clicking on "Next" button to continue and complete the installation.If the User Account Control dialog shows, click “Yes” to continue the installation.LibreOffice Installation Completed

User account control
Finish

If you are not able to install LibreOffice in your windows machine, follow this official website installation instructions

Language package installation in LibreOffice

LibreOffice interface has been translated (localized) into over 40 languages and most of the Indian languages. Additionally, there are over 70 spelling dictionaries available for languages. The dictionaries are available from the LibreOffice website. To use LibreOffice interface in your own language like hindi, kannada or in any other language, please follow below instructions.

Once again double click on the downloaded installation file (from the section #For Windows section), which will open LibreOffice installer wizard click on the next option
On the next (Program Maintenance) screen you will get 3 options (Modify, Repair, Remove), choose Modify option and click on next.

Installation wizard
Select modify

In the next screen, if you would like to install and use LibreOffice in your preferred language, then click on + button (small down arrow) in "user interface languages"
It will open the list of languages available, in that select your preferred language and select “This feature will be installed on the local hard drive”.

User interface Languages
Select your preferred language

Once all the required changes are done on the screen, click “Next >”
On the next "File Type" window, select all the options to open Microsoft Office files, Click “Next >”
Next screen "Shortcut and Load during system startup" screen click on the Install button to finish the installation.

Changing LibreOffice language interface (after the installation)

When creating a presentation in other languages, you can use the language setting ( Tools-> Options -> Language settings -> Languages -> User Interface -> Add the required language ) to create styles that only differ in the language in formatting attributes. This allows you to easily check spelling of all of the presentation contents without affecting appearance.

Menubar tools
Languages interface

For MAC OS

Go to this click and click on libreoffic MAC OS for MAC laptops
It will start downloading "LibreOffice_..._MacOS_x86-64.dmg" into your computer (by defulat browser will save the files in "Downloads" folder in your system
Double-click on download "LibreOffice_..._MacOS_x86-64.dmg" file to begin installation
An installation window appears: drag and drop the LibreOffice icon onto the Applications icon in the same window. You may be required to enter your administrator password.
The files are copied over and a progress bar shows when the installation is complete.

If you are not able to install Libreoffice in your MAC machine, follow this official website installation instructions

Working with the application

Creating and saving a text file

Creating and saving a text file
LibreOffice Writer main page
Save a document
Save window

Opening LibreOffice Writer - When you click on Application - Office - LibreOffice Writer, the main page will show as in the first image. You can add text, image, table and graphs in a text document. You can also type in multiple languages in the same document. To change the language click on "EN" button in top panel, and select the language you want to type in.
Saving a file - When you start entering text into the document, save your document by using SAVE option. Documents can be saved using the FILE – SAVE option or by using short-cut key CTRL+S. Always give a meaningful file name for your documents. To save a file with another file name, you can use the Save-as option from the File menu.
Saving a file - After selecting file name and folder click on "SAVE".
The file will be saved with a .odt extension. ODT is the short form of Open Document Text.

Parts of the main Writer window

The LibreOffice menu bar has multiple options for file operations (including saving discussed above), editing, viewing the document, inserting images, links, tables, etc in the document and formatting and defining styles in the document. The commonly used parts of the window are discussed below.

LibreOffice Writer menu
LibreOffice Writer (Parts of the window)

Lables of above Image

Title bar
Menu bar
Standard toolbar
Formatting toolbar
Rulers

Title bar

The Title bar is located at the top of the Writer window. It shows the file name of the current document. When the document is not yet named, the document name will appear as Untitled X, where X is a number. Untitled documents are numbered in the order in which they are created.

Menu bar

The Menu bar is located just below the Title bar in Windows and Linux and at the top of the screen in macOS. When you select one of the menus, a submenu drops down to show further options,including:

Commands that directly cause an action, such as Close or Save, in the File menu.
Commands that open further sub menus.

These are indicated by a right-pointing arrow following a command, such as Toolbars and Zoom, in the View menu. Moving the cursor onto one of these items causes its submenu to open.

Standard toolbar & Formatting toolbar

In a default LibreOffice installation , the top toolbar, just under the Menu bar, is called the Standard toolbar.

The second toolbar at the top is the Formatting toolbar. It is context-sensitive; that is, it shows the tools relevant to the current position of the cursor or the selected object. For example, when the cursor is in text, the Formatting toolbar provides tools for formatting text. When the cursor is on a graphic (image), the tools are for formatting images.

To free more space for the document, you can choose a single-toolbar alternative containing the most-used commands. To activate it, enable View > Toolbars > Standard (Single Mode) and also disable View > Toolbars > Standard and View > Toolbars > Formatting.
Other toolbars are available at View > Toolbars.

Rulers

The horizontal ruler across the top of the workspace is visible by default but the vertical ruler on the left is hidden by default.
To enable the vertical ruler, choose View > Rulers > Vertical Ruler from the Menu bar, or choose Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer > View. To quickly show or hide both rulers, use the key combination Ctrl+Shift+R.

Editing and formatting a document

Formatting a document

To copy text from one place to another, or from one document to another, you can select the text, go to Edit --→ Copy and go to a different place in the document to paste it; Edit → Paste. The editing menu also has an important feature for searching selected words. You can use the Edit--> Find option for searching selected words.
The format option is for changing the format of the text, changing the text font, text size, page format and text wrapping options. many of these option we can use short cut icons from formatting text tool bar, the letter “B” and “I” can be used to make the text bold and italics.
You can type in text in different languages, not only in English. You can type a paragraph of text with words/sentences in different languages. The IBUS application allows you to type in most Indian languages. To type in Hindi or Kannada or Telugu or Tamil, visit the Learn_Ubuntu page

Changing language

LibreOffice available in my language?

LibreOffice has been translated (localized) into over 40 languages, so your language probably is supported. Additionally, there are over 70 spelling, hyphenation, and thesaurus dictionaries available for languages, and dialects that do not have a localized program interface. The dictionaries are available from the LibreOffice website
When creating a text document in other languages, you can use the language setting ( Tools-> Options -> language settings -> languages -> Complex text layout -> Add the required language ) to create styles that only differ in the language in formatting attributes. This allows you to easily check spelling of all of the presentation contents without affecting appearance.

Inserting images and tables

Insert option in LibreOffice Writer
Insert Menu
Inserting Image
Inserted Image View

The insert menu option is for inserting images, hyper links, charts, page numbers, page breaks, formulas. Page numbers can be inserted in the footer of the page
Inserting an image - Go to Insert → Image → This will open a folder from which images are to be inserted
The image (triangle) inserted above will looks like this.

Inserting Table
Insert Table
Format Table

To insert Table, go to Table from Menu bar and select "Insert Table", in given window choose required number of rows and columns. Alternatively you can also insert table from toolbar, Click on table grid from toolbar and move the cursor over the grid until you highlight the number of columns and rows you want. Click and the table appears in the document.
You can format your table by selecting the options in 'Table'. Move your cursor inside the table and 'Select -> Table'. You can then adjust the row and column widths (Table -> Size), add or remove borders (Table -> Properties -> Borders), split or merge cells (Table -> Merge Cells, Table -> Split Cells) etc
You can also copy data from a spreadsheet. You can simply copy that data (in rows and columns) from the spreadsheet and paste into the document, it will create a copy of the spreadsheet in your document. If you do not want it as a spreadsheet, but only as a table, you need to select 'Paste Special -> Formatted text (RTF)' option.

Creating bulleted and numbered lists

The formatting option allows you to create numbered or bullet lists in the document. For this select the text input that has been entered, go to Format, select Bullets and Numbering and choose the numbering type that is needed. You can create sub-numbered lists.
In the format option under Format-->Paragraph you can also define spacing between paragraphs, indents,etc.

Creating an automatic Table of Contents

Inserting Table of Content
Paragraph style for Table of Content
Insert Table of Content

Often it is useful to create text documents which are organize into headings and sub headings to denote different sections. This can be done in two ways
1. You can select the text you want to define as a heading and choose from the predefined headings style, by selecting from the first drop down box as shown in the first image.
2. You can also define this from the Style menu by clicking on Style and selecting the given heading.
3. You can define the appearance of each heading under the Styles and formatting option by changing the default font colour, size, etc.
Once the headings are defined, you can insert the Table of Contents. Click in your document where you want to create the table of contents. Choose Insert - Table of Contents and Index – Index Entry, just click on “OK”. For updating table of content, right click on the table of content and Update Index or Table of Contents. Note that if you add any headings in the document, it will not automatically update the TOC, hence you will need to come to the TOC and do the update manually.

Adding page header and footer

Adding header and footers for the page
Inserting page fields

You can add a header and / or footer to your document. You could provide the name of the document (or any other static information) in the footer. You can also insert page number in the header or the footer, which will be dynamically generated by Writer. It is useful to have page number and name of your document on every page, this is specially useful if the reader wants to read a print copy. LibreOffice Writer allows you to easily insert this information at the bottom or top of each page. This can be done using Insert--->Footer.
Once a footer has been inserted, you can go to the bottom of the page and insert multiple fields of information using Insert--->Fields. You can type any text in this footer, it will come on all pages. Other than page number, other dynamic information you can provide is the date/time stamp of the document. A similar method can also be adopted for inserting a header as well.

Spelling check

Formatting in LibreOffice Writer
Auto spell checking
Spelling and grammar checking

Spelling - By enabling automatic spell checking under tools, you can check spelling within your document. You will see a red underline below a word spelt wrongly. (If you see a green line below a word, it suggests a grammatical error). You can move your cursor to the word and right click to get suggestions for correcting the spelling. In case you are clear your word is correct, you can also 'add your word to the dictionary' so that the next time you use it, it will not be treated as a wrong spelling.
You can also do a manual spelling and grammar checking of the document. Select the text and click on spelling and grammar under tools option. it will start looking spelling and grammar for the document. It is a good habit to always run a spelling check on your document before sharing.
To check the spelling and the grammar of a text, the appropriate dictionaries must be installed. You can have dictionaries for your own language (Telugu, Urdu etc) installed, apart from the one in English.

Saving the file

Like in most applications, a file can be saved using the FILE –> SAVE command, or by the shortcut key CTRL+S. Always give a meaningful file name, reading which you should get an idea of the file contents. Often adding the month-year information when the file was created can be useful later File will save in .odt format, ODT is the short form of Open Document Text. ODT conforms to Open Document Format (ODF) which is recommended by the Government of India through its Policy on open standards””.

Like in most applications, a file can be exported to a PDF format. This is useful when you only need to print the file and do not want any changes to it. You can also export a document to a 'html' (web page) format, which can be opened by a web browser.

Advanced features

Track changes (recording editing changes by another person in another colour in the document, which can be accepted or rejected by the author)
Multiple columns (useful for making newsletters and magazines) and other page layout functions

Ideas for resource creation

You can use this application to create and edit text resources. You can insert images, web links, hyper links in the document and connect the text to other resource formats. You can insert and edit tables, create sections (with section headings) and format it in many ways to create a text document.
Infographics, posters, comic strips are some resources you can create using text editors in addition to making reports.

References