Operation Manual

Introduction
HTML capabilities in LibreOffice include saving and exporting existing documents in HTML format.
This chapter describes how to do the following in Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw:
• Create hyperlinks within a document and to other documents such as web pages, PDFs,
and other files.
• Save documents as web pages (HTML documents) and create web pages using the Web
Wizard included with LibreOffice.
When creating a document that you plan to deliver as a web page, you need to consider the
following:
• In an HTML document, hyperlinks are active (clickable), but other cross-references inserted
by LibreOffice are not active links.
• An object such as an image is saved as a separate file. However, if that object has been
placed in a frame (for example, with an associated caption), it is not saved and does not
appear in the HTML document; instead, the name of the frame appears.
Relative and absolute hyperlinks
Hyperlinks stored within a file can be either relative or absolute.
A relative hyperlink says, Here is how to get there starting from where you are now (meaning from
the folder in which your current document is saved) while an absolute hyperlink says, Here is how
to get there no matter where you start from.
An absolute link will stop working if the target is moved. A relative link will stop working if the start
and target locations change relative to each other. For instance, if you have two spreadsheets in
the same folder linked to each other and you move the entire folder to a new location, an absolute
hyperlink will break but a relative one will not.
To change the way that LibreOffice stores the hyperlinks in your file, select Tools > Options >
Load/Save > General and choose if you want URLs saved relatively when referencing the File
System, or the Internet, or both.
Calc will always display an absolute hyperlink. Do not be alarmed when it does this even when you
have saved a relative hyperlink. This ‘absolute’ target address will be updated if you move the file.
Note
Make sure that the folder structure on your computer is the same as the file structure
on your web server if you save your links as relative to the file system and you are
going to upload pages to the Internet.
Tip
When you rest the mouse pointer on a hyperlink, a help tip displays the absolute
reference, because LibreOffice uses absolute path names internally. The complete path
and address can only be seen when you view the result of the HTML export (saving the
spreadsheet as an HTML file), by loading the HTML file as text, or by opening it with a
text editor.
328 | Getting Started with LibreOffice 5.0