Writer Guide

Step 1. Plan the project

Although you can make changes at most steps in this process, the more

you can plan before you start, the less work you will have to do to

correct any problems later. Here are some things you need to plan:

Parts of book or report required. What pages will be in the master

document and what will be in the subdocuments? (The ToC and index

must be in the master document.)

Consider as an example a book with the parts given in the table below.

Part Location

Title (cover) page In master document

Table of contents (ToC) In master document

Preface (Foreword) Subdocument

Chapters 1 to 8 Subdocuments

Appendixes A, B Subdocuments

Index In master document

Page, paragraph, character, frame, and numbering styles. See

Chapter 6 (Introduction to Styles) and Chapter 7 (Working with Styles)

for instructions on how to create or modify styles and examples of the

use of styles in book design.

Fields and AutoText entries, as required. See other chapters in this

book for ideas.

Step 2. Create a template containing the required

styles, fields, and other elements

You can create your template from an existing document or template

that contains some or all of the styles you want for this document, or

you can create the template from a blank document. For more about

templates, see Chapter 10 (Working with Templates).

If you use an existing document or template, delete all the text from it

except for fields in headers and footers before saving it as the template

for this project. It will still have all the styles you defined, even if the

text is not there. You can change the styles in the template as your

project develops.

Be sure to use File > Templates > Save when creating the template.

418 OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide