OpenOffice.Org 1.0 Resource Kit

Using Frames for Advanced Page Layout

Writer isn't Quark or Pagemaker, but it does offer you frames to give you a good start.

Frames , or text frames, give you the ability to insertanywhereone or more columns of text and objects. You can insert anything, even another frame. You can connect one frame to another, in order to easily start a story on page 1, then direct the reader to page 42 to continue reading it.

Floating frames hold an entire, open file inside of a frame, whether it's a graphic, a slide presentation, a web page, or a spreadsheet. When you insert a floating frame, you can work with that file within Writer as if you were working with the file itself. Menus, the toolbar, and the object bar all change to let you work with the file in the floating frame.

Combining the two with the other object-insertion features in this chapter lets you put just about anything just about anywhere in your document. Insert a text frame inside a table or vice versa; create a floating frame, then put a multi-column text frame, a graphic, and a spreadsheet inside the text frame.

Inserting a Quick Text Frame

1. In the toolbar at the left side of the work area, click and hold down the Insert tool at the top of the toolbar (not the Insert Object tool).

2. While holding down your mouse, move the mouse to the first tool and click on it. Move your mouse down and over to select the number of columns you want to insert.

3. Release the mouse; it will change from a standard mouse pointer to cross hairs.

4. Click in the document and draw the text box in the location where you want to anchor it.

You can apply more precise formatting to the text by selecting it, right-clicking, and choosing Frame.

Inserting a Text Frame With More Control

Use this procedure if you want more up-front control over the properties of the text box you want to insert.

1. Click where you want to insert the text box.

2. Choose Insert > Frame (not Floating Frame).

3. In the Frame window, set the options you want. Except for the Columns tab, which is fairly straightforward, the options are described in Tips for Adjusting Inserted Objects and Fixing Broken Links on page 304.

Inserting a Floating Frame Linked to an Existing Graphic, Document, or Object

A floating frame is much more than a text box. It can contain an entire file of any type that the program can open.

1. Click where you want to insert the floating frame.

2. In the toolbar, click and hold down the Insert Object tool, and click the Insert Floating Frame tool.

3. In the Frame Properties window, click the button to select the file.

4. Set the remaining properties for the window. Use Figure 7-46 for guidance. Figure 7-47 shows an example of a floating frame.

   Figure 7-46. Inserting a floating frame

   Figure 7-47. Example of a floating frame

5. Click OK.

Selecting or Typing in a Text Frame or Frame

Frames are just slightly tricky to get into, but only if you don't know how.

To type or insert objects in a text frame

Click outside the frame in the document. Then single-click inside a column in the text frame.

To select the frame itself in order to format it, move the mouse to the frame border until the mouse turns to crosshairs, then single click on the border. Then right-click and select Frame, or double-click, to bring up the Frame formatting window.

Creating Text Flow Between Separate Frames

You get a great deal of power over your text flow and page layout using linked text frames. You can link frames to each other even when they are on different pages of a document. The text will automatically flow from one to the other.

1. Create the frames you want to link. (Frames, not floating frames.) The second frame must be completely empty; that means not even a caption.

2. In order to create a link, click the edge of the frame you want to link (typically the first of two). Eight handles will appear around the edges, as shown in Figure 7-48.

   Figure 7-48. Selecting a frame to be linked

3. Click the Link Frames icon on the object bar, also shown in Figure 7-48. The mouse pointer will change to the icon shown at right.

4. Move the mouse pointer to inside the second text frame. When the icon changes and an outline appears around the frame, click in the frame. This is shown in Figure 7-49.

   Figure 7-49. Linking to the second frame

5. A line will appear between the two linked frames, as shown in Figure 7-50.

   Figure 7-50. The linked frames

6. You can move the second frame anywhere in the document, and enter text in the frame and format it. Keep adding frames if you want; just make sure each new one is totally blank until it's linked. See Figure 7-51.

   Figure 7-51. Three linked frames, which can be anywhere within a document (separate pages)

Unlinking Frames

To unlink the frames, select the first frame and click the Unlink icon on the toolbar. If more than two frames are linked, clicking the Unlink icon will unlink the last frame in the chain. You can only unlink in a "last in, first out" approach, not one particular link.

If it isn't displayed, show it by showing visible buttons for the object bar. See Showing All the Icons on the Toolbars on page 101.

When a linked frame is selected, any existing links are indicated by a connecting line.

Notes on Frames

Linking is only possible from one frame to the next. That means that a frame that is already linked to a frame cannot be linked to another frame which follows . Therefore, the link icon cannot be activated if a frame already has a next link. Also, two frames can only be unlinked with the Unlink Frames icon from the first frame.

Frames can't be linked if any of the following are true:

• The target is not empty. An (automatically) captioned frame is not empty and can therefore not be the target of a link.

• The target already has a previous link.

• Source and target are in different sections, i.e., one frame is in a header and the other frame is in a footer.

• The source already has a next link.

• Source and target are the same.

• Closed chains of frames, or chains from the inside out or from the outside in are also not permissible. The latter is the case if you inserted a frame into another frame and want to link them with each other.

Adjusting the Main Content in a Document Containing Frames

Presumably your document also contains normal text and objects that's not in the frames. In order to format where that content shows up in relationship to the inserted frames, see Tips for Adjusting Inserted Objects and Fixing Broken Links on page 304.

Controlling Page Flow in a Document With Inserted Objects

See Tips for Adjusting Inserted Objects and Fixing Broken Links on page 304.