1

CHAPTER
Introduction to Styles

In Class IX, you had learned to create, format and edit

documents in LibreOffice Writer. In today’s world, a
document created and presented in professional style
is appreciated by all. There are two ways of creating
an attractive digital document in Writer: manually
formatting a document or by applying styles.
You learned manual formatting in class IX, where you
selected a part of a document, such as page, paragraph
or words and then applied formatting effects using the
formatting toolbar. To format different portion(s) in the
document, having same style, steps were repeated for
all part(s) of the document. So, to change any aspect(s)
of formatting, the entire process was repeated for the
document. Manual formatting is popular, as it is easy to
use and requires less knowledge. Creating a big report
with consistent format becomes difficult when manual
formatting is used. To avoid inconsistency in formatting
and reduce time and effort in formatting a document, we
use Styles in Writer. In this chapter, you will learn how
to style a document by using– style formats, creating
new styles, updating styles, applying styles and using
template to format the current document.

Introduction to Styles
A style is a collection of all formatting information, which
you want to save and then apply on the document. For
example, following details of Font can be stored as a
style with the name ‘Title style’.
Size – 12
Name – Bookman Old Style
Weight –Bold
Alignment – Left

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 notes Now you can use and consistently apply Title style
to all titles of the document. To change the style of
Title in a document, you just need to update the Title
style and apply it to the document. Similarly, to change
the format of the complete document, just change the
style applied to it. Using Style allows you to shift your
focus from appearance of the document to the content
of document. This chapter will help you learn how to
create and apply styles in Libreoffice Writer.

Style Categories
Writer provides six Style categories, which are as follows:
(a) Page – all documents in Writer are based on
pages, hence for formatting them, Page Style is
used. It defines basic page layout like page size,
its margin, placement of header and footer,
footnote, borders and background. A document
can have one or many page styles. If a page style
is not specified, Writer uses its built-in Default
page style.
(b) Paragraph – after deciding on a page format,
next is the document content, which is organised
in paragraphs. A paragraph begins and ends
by pressing Enter key. Paragraph formatting
includes tab stops, text alignment, line spacing
and borders. Usually, it also includes Character
styling attributes.
(c) Character – this styling is used to work on block
of letters, i.e. word(s) in the paragraph instead
of the whole paragraph. By using character
styles, you can change the appearance of a part
of a paragraph without affecting the other part.
Character styles allow changing the text colour,
text size, highlighting text and emphasising it.
(d) Frame – using frames, a document can be
organised in sections, so that each section
of the page can have a different appearance.
Frames are like containers, which can hold text,
graphics and lists. Therefore, applying Frame
Styles allows to format a frame by specifying its
size, position, border and how the text is placed
around the picture.

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 (e) List – to style lists in a document, the Writer
provides a separate category. It can be used to
style lists by putting numbering or bullets of a
different kind or specify numeric format.
(f) Table – using tables, a large amount of
information can be organised and presented
effectively. Table Style category allows to format
a table by adding borders, using different text
or border colour(s), aligning text inside the
table, having different patterns or text
colour.
Now we know which Style category should
be applied to style/format a section of the
document, let’s learn how to apply it.

Styles and Formatting

Writer provides many options and tools to
style or format a document. All formatting
options, learned in Class IX, which can be
applied using Formatting toolbar, can also be Fig. 1.1: Style drop down list in Toolbar
applied using Style menu.
There are many predefined Styles in Writer,
which can be accessed by using the following
methods:
(i) Using Style option from Menu Bar
(ii) Using Style Drop Down list box, as
shown in Fig. 1.1, from the Toolbar. The
current paragraph style is displayed
in the textbox. If the Toolbar is not
visible then, click on View>Toolbars,
and enable Formatting/“Formatting
(Styles)”.
(iii) Using Sidebar Menu. On the Sidebar,
clicking on Styles icon, displays the Fig. 1.2: Style sub menu from sidebar
Style sub-menu as shown in Fig. 1.2.
(iv) Using keyboard shortcut — F11 function
key.
If you choose to style your document using
this option, you will find various available
options on top as shown in Fig. 1.3
In Fig. 1.3, first six icons allow to select
Fig. 1.3: Buttons at the top of sidebar
the category of style, such as Paragraph style, sub menu

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 Character style, Frame
style, Page style, List style
and Table style to work on.
Click on any one of these
buttons to display a list
of existing styles in that
category. From the bottom
of the window selecting
Show Preview option
displays its style along with
the name in the list.
Fig. 1.4 shows the list
when preview is not selected
and Fig. 1.5 shows when the
Fig. 1.4: Paragraph Styles Fig. 1.5: Paragraph Styles with
preview is selected.
without Show previews Show previews At the bottom of this
menu, there is a Drop Down
list, to select the filter for the style list to be displayed
above. By default this filter is set to Hierarchical as
shown at the bottom of Fig. 1.5.

Assignment 1
Select each of the Styles – Character style, Frame style, Page style,
List style and Table style and list the styles under each category.

Let us use these styles in a document. For applying any

styles, such as Paragraph, Character, Frame, Page, List,
Table follow the given steps.
Step 1. Select the text to be formatted. The selected
text may be a collection of characters, words,
lines, paragraph, page, frame or table.
Step 2. To format the selected text, choose appropriate
style by clicking the button from the top of the
Styles bar.
Step 3. A list of styles for that category appears.
Double click on the desired style to apply to
the selected text.

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 notes
Practical Activity 1.1
Apply an existing Heading style, from Paragraph Styles.
Step 1. Create a new document named ‘noise.odt’ with the text
as shown in Fig. 1.6.
Step 2. Add a title, ‘Noise Pollution’ on top.

Fig. 1.6: noise.odt

Step 3. Select the Tile – Noise Pollution

Step 4. Open Styles Menu using Sidebar and go to Headings
option.
Step 5. Double click on Heading 4 to apply. Observe that the
Fig. 1.7 shows the Heading 4 style is applied to the
heading ‘Noise Pollution’.

Fig. 1.7: Applying Heading 4 options of Paragraph Styles

Using predefined Heading Style, allow you to use them

as a Book Mark for browsing the document.

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 notes
Practical Activity 1.2
Apply an existing page style on ‘noise.odt’
Step 1. Open file ‘noise.odt’ created in Activity 1.2.
Step 2. Insert a blank page in the beginning by selecting
Insert>Page Break from main menu bar, as shown in
Fig. 1.8.

Fig. 1.8: Inserting page break

Step 3. Observe that in Fig. 1.9, inserting a page break will shift
the matter to the second page. Now, place the cursor at
the beginning of page 2, where the matter appears as
shown in Fig. 1.9.
Step 4. Open Style Menu from side bar and select the Page
Styles option as shown in Fig. 1.9.

Fig. 1.9: Selecting Landscape from Page Styles option of

sidebar menu
Step 5. Double click on Landscape to change page orientation
to Landscape. After applying Page Styles, you can
observe that the document pages orientation is changed
to Landscape from Portrait.
Note: Applying page style on a page may affect the entire document.

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 Assignment 2 notes
(i) Try applying Landscape option on one page of a large file.
(ii) Explore, in which situation Conditional Styles filter, given
in Paragraph category of styling, can be used?

Fill Format
To apply a style on words present at different locations
in the document, you will have to go to each word
separately and apply it on each word. Writer provides a
convenient way of doing it through Fill Format option.
It is the second icon from right on the Style menu, as
shown in Fig 1.3. This method is useful when a same
style is to be applied at many places scattered in the
document. Fill Format can be used to style scattered –
pages, frames, tables, lists, paragraphs or characters.
Follow the steps given below to use it.
Step 1. Open the document to be styled.
Step 2. Open the Styles window and select the desired
style category and then desired style from drop
down list.
Step 3. Select Fill Format button.
Step 4. To apply the selected style, take the mouse
pointer to desired location and click. Do take
care to apply style on appropriate type of
content.
Step 5. Repeat step 4 until all the changes have been
made for that style in the entire document.
Step 6. To quit Fill Format option, click the Fill
Format button again or press the Esc key.

Practical Activity 1.3

Use Fill Format to change appearance of paragraphs at different
places in the document using paragraph formatting. A file
‘documentation.odt’ with at least 5 pages of text is used for
the activity.

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 Step 1. Open a file ‘documentation.odt’ having 5 pages of text.
Observe the indented sentences in second page in
Fig. 1.10.

Fig. 1.10: Pages of file documentation

Step 2. Go to Style Menu from sidebar and click on Paragraph

category, and select List Paragraph from the drop down
list as shown in Fig. 1.11.

Fig. 1.11: Selecting List paragraph option in Paragraph Styles category

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 Step 3. Click at the beginning of the sentence to be styled using
List Paragraph.
Step 4. Now click on Fill button, keep on doing same to apply
the style for all sentences using desired format. Observe
in Fig. 1.12 that how the indented list items look after
applying the Fill Format button.
Step 5. Press ‘Esc’ key to disable Fill button.

Fig. 1.12: Using Fill Format button

Creating and Updating a New Style

Till now you have used only predefined styles to format
a document. If existing styles specified by Writer do
not match your requirement, then it is also possible to
create a Custom Style. There are many ways to create
a custom style, two of them – From Selection and by
using drag and drop are explained here.
(a) From Selection – last button in Style menu, is
Styles action button is used to create a new
style or modify an existing style. It can also be
used to load a style defined in document or
template, in the list. Let us learn how to create
a new style; which is the first function in the
drop down list of action button.

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 Step 1. Select the portion of document, such as page,
paragraph, character, to change its appearance.
Format it as per the requirement.
Step 2. From the buttons at the top of the Style menu,
choose the category (paragraph, character,
page, etc.) for which a new style is to be created.
Fig. 1.13: Selecting New Style Step 3. Select Style action button. A list of options as
from Selection to create a New shown in Fig. 1.13 is displayed. Click on New
Style Style from Selection.
Step 4. In Create Style dialog
window, type the name of
new style, say, ‘MyStyle’
as shown in Fig. 1.14.
The names of existing
styles are displayed in the
window.
Step 5. Click OK to save the name
of new style.
Observe that the name
of the newly created style
‘MyStyle’ appears in the
Fig. 1.14: Creating a new style MyStyle
list of styles.

Practical Activity 1.4

To create a custom paragraph style ‘myStyle’, using file
‘noise.odt’ created in Practical Activity 1.2.
Step 1. Open file ‘noise.odt’ created in Practical Activity 1.2.
Step 2. Format the content of the paragraph with Font face –
Arial, Font size 12, line spacing 1.5.
Step 3. Select paragraph button from Style Menu of sidebar as
shown in Fig. 1.15.

Fig. 1.15: Selecting Paragraph Style

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 Step 4. Select Style Action button.
Step 5. Click on New Style From Selection. A Create Style dialog
box will appear as shown in Fig. 1.16.

Fig. 1.16: Create New style using Selection

Step 6. Type ‘myStyle’ as style name in the box and click OK.
The Style Name (myStyle) will appear in the drop down
list under Paragraph category.

Fig. 1.17: New created myStyle becomes part of Style list under
Paragraph category

Updating a Style
Instead of creating a new style for a small changes in
predefined style, an existing Style can be modified on
desired aspect. Updating Current Style (Fig. 1.18), the Fig. 1.18: Selecting Update
second option in list can be used for doing so. Selected Style option

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 notes Follow the given below steps to modify an existing user
defined style of page, frame or paragraph style.
Step 1. Select the page/paragraph to be modified.
Step 2. Format the selected portion as per the
requirement.
Step 3. Go to Style menu, and click on the button to update.
Step 4. Using Style Action button, click on Updated
Selected Style.
Note – Ensure that the aspect modified remains same
throughout the selection. For example, in paragraph, if
you are changing font face or size then, throughout the
paragraph it should remain same.

Using Drag and Drop

Another way of creating a new style is using Drag and
Drop method. It is very easy, as the desired formatted
portion of text is just dragged and dropped at correct
place in the Style menu.
Use the following steps to create a new Style using
Drag and Drop method.
Step 1. Select the text from the document and change
its formatting as desired.
Step 2. From the buttons at the top of the Style menu,
choose the desired category of style to create.
Step 3. Click on the desired style under which, new
style is to be created.
Step 4. From the document drag the selected portion of
text to the Style Menu.
Note – While dragging the text, check the cursor shape,
as it changes to indicate whether the desired operation
is possible or not.
Step 5. Create Style dialog window appears (see
Fig. 1.16), type the name of new style. Names
of existing styles are displayed in the window.
Step 6. Click OK button to save the name of new style.
The Create Style window displays the list of custom
styles. To update an existing style, choose the style
name from the list. So same method can be used to
create or update a Style. Drag and Drop cannot be used
to create a Page Style.

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 notes
Practical Actiivty 1.5
Create a new style ‘myStyle1’ using drag and drop, by changing
line spacing to 1 and font size to 13 in myStyle.
Step 1. Open file ‘noise.odt’ created in Practical Activity 1.2.
Step 2. Format the content of the paragraph with Font size 13
and line spacing 1.
Step 3. Select paragraph button from Style menu of sidebar as
shown in Fig. 1.19.

Fig. 1.19: Paragraph Styles in Style menu of sidebar

Step 4. Now drag the selected text to Style menu, as shown in

Fig. 1.20.

Fig. 1.20: Creating a new style using drag and drop

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 Step 5. Press OK. The style name (myStyle1) will appear in the
drop down list under Paragraph category as shown in
Fig. 1.21.

Fig. 1.21: New style myStyle1 created using drag and drop appears in
the style list

Apart from creating a new style or modifying an existing

style, a new document can be styled/formatted using
pre-defined templates or another document which suits
our requirement. This helps in copying all styles of the
template/document in one go to our Style menu and
makes formatting our task easy.

Load Styles (from a template or document)

The last option, in Style Action button of Style Menu
is Load Styles. It is used to copy styles from an existing
template or document. Once copied, in the list of styles,
you can create a new document having same appearance
as old one with no extra efforts.
Follow the given steps to copy style from template or
document
Step 1. In the Styles Menu, click on the Load Styles
as shown in Fig. 1.22.
Step 2. It will open the Load Styles dialog box as
shown in Fig. 1.23. In the Load Styles dialog
box, choose the category of your document.
Fig. 1.22: Selecting Load Step 3. Find and select the desired template to copy
Styles option from Style Action
button
styles from. Note that there are no templates
stored in My Templates category.
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Step 4. From the same dialog window,
also, select the options for the
types of styles to be copied,
such as Text for Paragraph
and Character styles, Frame,
Pages or Numbering (List
styles). By selecting Overwrite
option, the styles being copied
will replace any existing styles
with the same name.
Step 5. Click OK to copy the styles.
Step 6. In case styles are to be copied Fig. 1.23: Selecting the My Templates from Categories
of Load Styles dialog window
from a file, then instead of
Template option, click on the From File button.
A File Selection dialog box is displayed. Select
the desired document from your computer.

Applying styles
Whenever a new document is created,
the Writer applies default style(s) to it,
and the same is displayed in the status
bar as shown in Fig. 1.24.
You may like to retain the default
style or change it.
Self Exploration
Learn other ways of accessing Style
options as listed in section 1.4.

summary
Fig. 1.24: The current Default Style is displayed on the
• A Style is collection of all status bar
formatting information, which
you want to save and then apply on the document.
• Writer provides six Style categories – Page,
Paragraph, Character, Frame, List and Table.
• Predefined Heading style(s) act as bookmarks
in a document. These bookmarks allow faster
browsing in a document.
• These Style(s) tools can be accessed from Menu
bar, Drop Down List and Side bar.
• Fill Format is used to style scattered – Pages,
Frames, Tables, Lists, Paragraphs or Characters
in a document.
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 notes • Writer allows creating custom style and saving
them for future use.
• These new styles can be created using Selection
method or Drag and Drop method.
• Drag and Drop method cannot be used to create
a Page style.
• A user defined style once created, can be updated
at any point of time. Steps used for updating a
style are same as creation of style.
• A document can be styled using another document
or a template.

Practical Exercises
1. Mr R K Sharma is planning to change his job. He
approaches a company (www.naukri.in) for helping him
in finding new job. Mr Sharma is asked to submit his
CV/Resume in the company. He has downloaded a
sample CV from “template.com”. Help him in creating his
CV in the same format. Also save the format as “CV1” on
the computer, for future reference.
2. Raghav receives a non-styled text document as shown in
Fig. 1.25, from his teacher to convert it into desired
appearance as shown in Fig. 1.26. He has to save it as
“reportStyle” for future reference. Write the process that
he should follow.

Fig. 1.25: Practical Exercise 2 Original Document

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 notes

Fig. 1.26: Appearance of Styled Document

3. Kendriya Vidyala No. 3, is planning to publish a monthly

digital newsletter for their school. Ravish Pandey of class
12, heads the group responsible to design it on computer.
Size of news letter finalised is 5 inch (length) by 8 inch
(height). It was also decided that:
• The newsletter will have two pages with 4 leaves.
• The first leaf will provide brief information about school.
• The second leaf will have a table, displaying the
school’s last year’s Board exam results.
• On the third leaf School achievements (at least 4) for
the current session will be given.
• The last leaf will have articles or poems (at least 2)
written by students.
You being part of the team are required to perform the following
using Style Menu from Sidebar:
(a) Suggest appropriate style category (page, frame, and
table) to be used to design the newsletter.
(b) Create digital copy of it.
(c) Apply Left Page and Right Page format on appropriate
leaves.
(d) Also set the same margins on all leaves, having same
border on all.
(e) Add page number on each leaf. The page number
should appear in Footer as “Page – number”. Right
align these numbers on each leaf.

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 notes (f) For heading(s) and sub heading(s) use Heading 2 and
Heading 4, in the newsletter.
(g) On the first leaf, while displaying information about
school, use character styling of your choice to make it
attractive.
(h) Use table to style Board Results, using grid rows and
columns.
(i) Each row of the table should have a number – in
Roman, prefixed to content.
(j) Organise school achievements in frames, where
individual frame is to be styled using Frames of
Paragraph category.
(k) Using selection method, save the style in respective
category, so that the same can be used to publish
future newsletters to maintain consistency.

Check Your Progress

A. Multiple choice questions
1. Which of the following features in LibreOffice Writer is/are
used to create the given document?
(a) Page borders
(b) Envelope
(c) Picture from
File
(d) Indexes and
Tables
2. Styles menu (from
sidebar) in Writer provide options to
work on
(a) Paragraph Styles
(b) Frame Styles
(c) Page Styles
(d) All of the above
3. What is style template in LibreOffice Writer?
(a) Pre-determined form and mode of document file
(b) One kind of model style
(c) One type of document
(d) Cluster of documents in Writer
4. Which of the following gives the status of your document
like page numbers, number of pages?
(a) Status bar (b) Standard toolbar
(c) Formatting (d) Title bar
5. Which of the following can be used to access a style menu?
(a) F11 function key (b) Sidebar Menu
(c) Formatting toolbar (d) All of these
B. Fill in the blanks
1. A __________ is a collection of different formats
2. Styles are especially handy in __________.

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 3. Proper use of styles improves __________ in a document notes
4. The first five buttons at the top of the Styles window select
the category of __________.
5. Using predefined __________ creates Bookmark in the
document.
6. On opening a new file _________ Style is used for formatting
the document.
7. In page layout documents, you can arrange __________ like
text boxes and graphics.
8. Character styles are often integrated in __________ Style.
9. __________ allows to apply style at different places in the
document.
10. Predefined Style __________ be updated by Drag and Drop
method.

C. Short answer questions

1. What do you understand by styles in LibreOffice writer

document?
2. Write advantages of using Style over manual formatting,
for designing a document.
3. What are the different categories of style in LibreOffice
writer document?
4. Write down the steps to update a style.
5. What do you understand by custom styles in LibreOffice writer?
6. In a document Introduction paragraph is to be designed
extensively by setting its font (face, size, weight, colour),
space above it and giving number to heading. Given below
are the steps used to do so.
(i) Select the Introduction (paragraph)
(ii) Open Font list from Toolbar
(iii) Select the font
(iv) Open Font size from Toolbar
(v) Select the desired font size
(vi) Select Font weight (Bold) from the toolbar
(vii) Open Font color from Toolbar
(viii) Select desired color
(ix) Using Format menu option, select Spacing > Paragraph
> Indent and Spacing
(x) Edit space above paragraph
(xi) Add number by Selecting Numbered list from Toolbar.
7. Give two examples, where instead of Style, using manual
formatting will be beneficial.
8. Give one situation, in which you will prefer to use Fill
Format for styling your document.
9. Write steps to load style(s) from a template.

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 2
CHAPTER
Working with Images

It is easy to read and comprehend a good interactive

document. A word processing application has rich
features, which allows to create an interactive document.
A document containing pictures is always easier to
understand than a pure text document. Pictures have
visual appeal, as our brain responds quickly to colors in
comparison to any other form of information. A picture
can be a drawing, chart, photo, logo, graph, or single video
frame. In digital document a picture can be a graphic or
image representation, which is a digital image. Till now,
we have created a text document with different features,
such as formatting and using styles. In this chapter
you will learn to create a document with pictures. You
will learn to insert and modify images in the document
to make it more attractive. LibreOffice Writer provides
various tools to work with images. A picture is a digital
image, which is representation of image in finite set of
digital values 0 or 1, known as pixels. These are stored
in various types of graphics files with the file extension,
such as GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, etc.

Inserting an Image in a Document

LibreOffice Writer allows to work on images, shapes,
charts and diagrams by providing various tools. The
image file stored on the computer, can be inserted into
a document using different ways, such as using Insert
Image dialog, using Drag and Drop option, using Cut,
Copy and Paste option and lastly by Linking.

Inserting Image Using Insert Image Option

A general procedure to insert an image using Insert
Image dialog box, is as follows.
Step 1. Open the document to insert an image in
LibreOffice Writer.

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Step 2. Place the cursor where you want to insert an notes
image.
Step 3. Select and click on Insert > Image from menu
bar
Step 4. An Insert Image dialog box will open which will
allow to choose the picture file to be inserted.
Step 5. Select the file and click on Open button to insert
an image in document.

Practical Acitivity 2.1

Insert an image using Insert Image dialog box in the file
“noise.odt” created in previous chapter.
Step 1. Ensure that you have an image file on your computer
hard disk. Otherwise download a relevant image from
Internet.
Step 2. Open “noise.odt” file created in Practical Activity 1.2 of
Chapter 1.
Step 3. Place the cursor to the next line of the text to insert the
image file, and then click on Insert menu from the
menu bar as shown in Fig. 2.1.

Fig. 2.1: Selecting Insert menu for inserting Image

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 notes Step 4. Click on Image option, opens Insert Image browsing
window to select an image. Select desired image as
shown in Fig. 2.2.

Fig. 2.2: Insert image browsing window

Step 5. Click Open button. The image appears at desired place
as shown in Fig. 2.3.

Fig. 2.3: Image inserted in noise.odt document

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Inserting Image using Drag and Drop option notes
Another option to insert images in the document is by
using Drag and Drop option. The standard procedure
is just drag the image from its source and drop it at
desired position in the document. A general procedure
to insert an image using drag and drop option, is as
follows.
Step 1. Open the document to insert an image in
LibreOffice Writer.
Step 2. Open a file browser window (Win+E) and select
the image file to be inserted.
Step 3. Drag the image into the document
Step 4. Drop it, where you want it to appear in
the document.

Inserting image using Copy and Paste method

As stated above, another way to insert an image in the
document is by using copy and paste method. In this
method instead of dragging the image, copy the image
and then paste into the desired location of the document.

Inserting an image using any of the above described method

saves a copy of image file in the document wherever image
is inserted, that means, the image gets embedded in
the document.

Practical Activity 2.2

Insert an image from one document (source) to another document
(target) using Clipboard. Source file is “typewriter.odt” having
different images of typewriter, and target file is “documentation.
odt” created in the previous chapter.
Step 1. Open source file
“typewriter.odt”
and target file
“documentation.
odt”.
Step 2. In the source
document, select
the image to be
copied, as shown
in Fig. 2.4.
Fig. 2.4: Selected image in typewriter.odt

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 notes Step 3. Move the mouse pointer over the selected image and
copy the image by using keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+C)
or right-click and select Copy option from the context
menu to copy the image to the clipboard.
Step 4. Switch to the target file, “documentation.odt”.
Step 5. Place the cursor on the location where you want to
insert the image as shown in Fig. 2.5.

Fig. 2.5: Placing cursor to insert image in documentation.odt

Step 6. Paste the image by using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+V)
or right-click and select Paste option from the context
menu to paste the image as shown in Fig. 2.6.

Fig. 2.6: documentation.odt after inserting image from typewriter.odt

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Inserting an image by linking notes
If multiple copies of the same image are required to be
inserted in the document, it is beneficial to save the link
of image instead of inserting the image. Inserting a link,
stores its reference instead of the image itself, thereby
reduces the size of the document, because actual image
is saved only once as a separate file along with the
document.
Whenever a document containing the link is opened,
the image file gets merged, at the place(s) where reference
was stored, and displayed on screen to the user. A
general procedure to link the image file is as follows.
In Insert Image dialog box, check the Link option as
shown in Fig. 2.7

Fig. 2.7: Link check box in Insert image dialog window

Keyboard shortcut to link an image – drag and drop
the image while holding the Ctrl+Shift keys.

Assignment 1
Explore how to insert an image from Writer’s Gallery or from
any other device?

Modifying an Image
Sometimes we may have to modify the image inserted in
the document to suit its requirement. The Image toolbar
is used to resize, crop, delete and rotate the image.

Using the Image toolbar

The image toolbar automatically appears when an image
is inserted or selected in the document. If you want to
keep it always on screen, click on View > Toolbars >
Image from the menu bar. The Image toolbar will be
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 displayed as shown in Fig. 2.8. Table 2.1 describes
various tools that are made available through this image
toolbar.

Fig. 2.8: Image Toolbar

Table 2.1: Description of Image Toolbar

Tool Effect on image

There are 11 types of filters available
Image Filter for improving an image. Details given in
Table 2.2
Image can be changed to black and white,
Image Mode
gray-scale or a watermark
Crop Cuts off non-desirable part of the image
o
Flip Horizontally Flips the image Horizontally by 180
o
Flip Vertically Flips the image Vertically by 180
o o
Rotate 90 left Rotates the image by 90 left
o o
Rotate 90 right Rotates the image by 90 right
Image can be rotated by any angle using
Rotate
this tool
Makes an image transparent by using the
Transparency
value provided in percentage
Using Drop Down list (as shown in
Fig. 2.9), Red, Blue or Green colour can
Colour
be modified or adjustment for brightness,
contrast and gamma can be made

To apply any of the tools from image toolbar, select the

image on which tool is to be applied and then click on
the tool. Clicking on the colour button will display the
colour drop down list as shown in Fig. 2.9. It consists of
six components in the drop down list. One can increase
or decrease the percentage of these components. The
first components represent the three primary colours
Red, Green and Blue, respectively. The fourth component
represent the Brightness, fifth component represent
the Contrast and last sixth component represent
Fig. 2.9: Color dropdown list the Gamma.

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Clicking on Image Filter opens up a window with
11 filters, as shown in Fig. 2.10. Table 2.2 gives the
brief description of various tools available in the Image
Filter window.
Table 2.2: Description of Image Filter
Tool Effect on Image
Inverts the colour values of coloured
Invert image. In case image is gray-scale then its
brightness is inverted.
Softens the contrast of image. Another
Smooth Fig. 2.10: Image Filter window
dialogue box appears to adjust parameter
Sharpen Increases the contrast of image
Remove Noise Removes single pixels from the image
Used in Photographs to reverse the tone.
Dark appears light and light appears dark.
Solarisation
Another dialogue box appears to adjust
parameter.
Simulates the effect of time on picture. On
Aging clicking it, another dialogue box appears to
adjust parameter.
Makes a picture appear like painting by
reducing colours in the image. Another
Posterise
dialogue box appears to adjust parameter,
when this icon is clicked.
Charcoal Sketch Changes image as charcoal sketch
Adjusts light source to create shadow using
Relief
dialogue box to adjust parameter
Joins group of pixels into a single area of
Mosaic one colour. Another dialogue box appears
to adjust parameter.

Practical Acitivity 2.3

Insert an image in a document

and rotate the image.
Step 1. Open a new document
in LibreOffice Writer.
Step 2. Go to Insert menu and
Select Image >> From
File
Step 3. Insert an image from
library as shown in
Fig. 2.11. Fig. 2.11: Image inserted in a new
document

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 notes Step 4. Select image and then click on rotate tool. Observe that
four dots known as handles, appeared on four corners
of the image.
Step 5. Move the mouse on any corner and observe that the
‘rotate’ symbol is activated.
Step 6. Click on rotate symbol on the top right corner of the image
and drag it to downward direction, as shown in Fig. 2.12.

Fig. 2.12: Rotating image Fig. 2.13: Image after rotation

Step 7. The image rotated is shown in the Fig. 2.13.

Practical Acitivity 2.4

Crop an image in a new file.
Step 1. Open a new document in LibreOffice Writer.
Step 2. Insert an image in the document as shown in Fig. 2.14
using Insert >> Image >> From File option as
demonstrated above.

Fig. 2.14: Document after inserting Fig. 2.15: Changed handles for
image cropping the image
Step 3. Select the image by clicking on the image. Observe that
the selected image is surrounded by eight small squares
as shown in Fig. 2.14.
Step 4. Click on crop tool from Image toolbar. Now observe that
the eight small squares surrounding the image will be
changed into the blue coloured handles as shown in
Fig. 2.15. These are the handles used to crop the image.

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 Step 5. Click any of these edges of the image and drag the
cursor towards the center of image as shown in
Fig. 2.16. Observe that the image is being cropped up to
the dotted lines. It is possible to crop the image by clicking
on dragging any of the edge as per the requirement.

Fig. 2.16: Cropping the image Fig. 2.17: Image after cropping
from upper right edge

Step 6. Click anywhere on the page or press Esc key to leave

the crop tool and observe the cropped image as shown
in Fig. 2.17.

Resizing an Image
Sometimes you may want to resize the image to fit an
image at the desired place in a document. Resizing
is the process of reducing or enlarging the size of the
image. This can be done in various ways. Quick and
easy way to resize an image is by dragging the image’s
sizing handles. Use the following steps to resize image:
Step 1. Click on the image inserted in the
previous activity. Observe that there are
eight sizing handles surrounding the
image as shown in Fig. 2.14.
Step 2. Position the pointer over one of the sizing
handles. The pointer changes shape
indicating the direction of resizing.
Step 3. Click and drag to resize the image as
shown in Fig. 2.18.
Step 4. Release the mouse button when satisfied
with the new size and observe the size of
the image is reduced.

Fig. 2.18: Resizing the image

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 By dragging the corner handles, one can resize
both the width and the height of the image
simultaneously, while the other four handles
only resize one dimension at a time.
Note that while resizing the image its size
gets changed, but while cropping the image
cuts it.

Deleting an Image
It is possible to delete the image from the document just
like we delete the text. To delete the image, just select the
image by clicking on the image and press the Delete key.

Drawing Objects
If you need to draw a flowchart or a callout box in your
document, LibreOffice Writer provides the feature of
drawing tools for such work. The set of drawing tools
available in Writer are easy to use, and helps in creating
good quality designs, diagrams and drawings. Once you
create the drawings, you can directly place it in the
document. These diagrams can also be copied or
imported in other packages.

Using Drawing Tools

To display Drawing Toolbar
in the Writer window, click on
View > Toolbars > Drawing
as shown in Fig. 2.19. This
will display the Drawing
Toolbar in the Writer window
as shown in Fig. 2.20. The
toolbar contains various basic
drawing objects of different
Fig. 2.19: Enabling Drawing tools types to create any design of
your choice.
There are many default drawing objects used to
create designs in document. To use them –
Step 1. Place the cursor in the document where you
want the drawing to be placed (anchored). You
can change the anchor later, if required.

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 Rectangle rounded
Right angle triangle

Circle Symbol (list) Flowchart (list)

Polygon
Star (list)
Fontwork
Square
Curve (list)

Select
Curve Oval
Call Out (list)
Points
Insert Line Rectangle
Lines & Arrows (list) Arrow (list)
Call outs
Isosceles triangle
Toggle Extrusion

Basic shapes (list) Text Box

Fig. 2.20: Drawing Toolbar

Step 2. Select the tool from the Drawing toolbar as

shown in Fig. 2.20. The mouse pointer changes
to a drawing-functions pointer.
Note – One more toolbar appears on the screen, the
Drawing Object Properties. It is shown in Fig. 2.23
and explained later.
Step 3. Move the pointer to the place in the document
where you want the image to appear and then
click-and-drag to create the drawing object.
Step 4. Release the mouse button to finish drawing.
The selected drawing function remains active,
so that you can draw another object of the
same type.
Step 5. To cancel the selected drawing function, press
the Esc key or click the Select icon (the arrow)
on the Drawing toolbar.

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 notes
Practical Activity 2.5
Draw a family tree with 3 family members, Mr R K Sharma
(Grandfather), Mr B Sharma (Father), Mrs Sunita Sharma
(Mother).
Step 1. Open a new document in LibreOffice Writer. Enable the
Drawing toolbar and ensure that it is displayed on the
bottom of the document window as shown in
Fig. 2.21.

Fig. 2.21: Rectangles created using drawing tool for family tree

Step 2. Select Rectangle Round tool from the toolbar. Place

the cursor on the location where you want to draw the
family tree, and drag it to create a rectangle. In the
same manner, create other two rectangles as shown in
Fig. 2.21.
Step 3. Enter the text in all three rectangular boxes as shown
in Fig. 2.22. To enter text, select the rectangle and then
type the text.
Step 4. Select the type of line (simple line and line with arrow)
from Line tool to draw lines showing hierarchical relation
as shown in Fig. 2.22.
Step 5. Save the diagram in file “family.odt”.

It is also possible to change the properties of the

object on which you are working. Writer provides tools
in Drawing Object Properties toolbar for changing
properties, i.e. customising an object. Using these tools
the object can be moved, resized, rotated, edited and
conFig.d on various aspects.
Properties of the object can be modified or edited,
either at the time of its creation, i.e. before you start
drawing them or after its creation. When properties are
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modified before creation, it is known as setting default
value(s). To work on properties, you can use tools from
the toolbar and change the desired aspect of the object.
Properties can also be modified by right clicking on
the object.

Fig. 2.22: Drawing of family tree using rectangles

Setting or Changing Properties of Drawing

Object
On selecting the drawing
object, in the document,
Drawing Object Properties
Toolbar is displayed as shown
in Fig. 2.23. It is a floating
toolbar, and can be placed
Fig. 2.23: Drawing Object Properties Toolbar
anywhere on the screen.
To set the properties before drawing the object, follow
the given steps.
Step 1. From the Drawing Toolbar, select the object
you want to draw.
Step 2. From Drawing Object Properties Toolbar,
click on the icon of property to be modified.
Step 3. Change the value of parameter.
Step 4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 to change all desired
properties.

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 notes Step 5. Draw the desired figure by following the steps
given in the previous section.
Changes done in properties of an object, before creating it, are
available only for current session.

Follow the steps for changing properties of the object

after drawing it.
Step 1. Select the object whose properties are to be
modified.
Step 2. Follow steps 2 to 5 of the previous process of
setting Properties before drawing an object.

Practical Activity 2.6

In the file “family.odt” created in Activity 2.5, add two more
members, a son Master Rohit Sharma and a daughter Baby
Deepika Sharma. Make a copy of the file. Then change the
properties of Rectangle as (Fill color – lime yellow, border line
– Orange having 0.08” width) and Line (color – black, Style –
ultrafine dashed) used in Family Tree.
Step 1. Open file “family.odt” in LibreOffice Writer.
Step 2. Add two rounded rectangle and add text in them to
reflect two more members in the diagram.
Step 3. Save a copy as “family1.odt”. Keep on working in
“family.odt”
Step 4. Select a rectangle using selection tool.
Step 5. Click on Fill Color tool in Drawing Object Properties
toolbar, and change the color selected rectangle as
shown in Fig. 2.24.

Fig. 2.24: Using Fill Color tool for rectangle

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 Step 6. In the same way change color of all the rectangles. notes
Step 7. Select a line in the drawing. Click on Line Color tool
and select Black color to change the line color from blue
to black. In the same way, change the color of all the
lines to black as shown in Fig. 2.25.

Fig. 2.25: Using Line Color tool for changing the line color

Step 8. You can also change the border color of rectangle using
Line color tool and width of the border by specifying the
value in line width option.
Step 9. Alternately you can change the line color and width by
right clicking on the object and then selecting the “Line”
option from the context menu as shown in Fig. 2.26.

Fig. 2.26: Right clicking on object to select Line option from

context menu

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 notes Step 10. To change the line color and width of all the rectangles,
select all the rectangles by holding shift key and clicking
on each rectangle. This will open the Line dialog window
as shown in Fig. 2.27. Change the line color to “Orange”
and specify the line width as “0.08” as shown in
Fig. 2.27 and click on the OK button.

Fig. 2.27: Specifying line color and line width for selected objects in the
Line dialog window
Observe in Fig. 2.28, the line color and width changed
as specified

Fig. 2.28: Family Tree with desired object properties

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Resizing and Grouping objects notes
Sometimes you may want to change the size of drawing
to accommodate it at a particular place in the document.
This can be done either by changing its size only or by
changing its shape and size both. Follow the given steps
to resize a drawing.
Step 1. Select the object to be resized. All eight handles
on the corners and edges will be visible.
Step 2. Click on any of the handles and drag it to its
new place. The object will be scaled up or down,
depending on your action. Also whether object’s
shape will be retained or not, will depend on
the handle you choose for resizing.
Step 3. For resizing and maintaining original shape of
drawing, use corner handles.
Step 4. Using edge handles will resize drawing
non-proportionally.

Assignment 2
Use SHIFT key, while resizing the object, in both the cases
and observe the difference in action.

While drawing an object comprising more than one

overlapping shape, on screen they stay together looking
like a single entity. But actually they are different shapes
placed together as different entities. So, when you
choose to edit them you have to work on each individual
shape. To treat these shapes as one Fig., they may be
grouped together.
Grouping drawing objects
LibreOffice Writer allows grouping these different shapes,
to behave as a single entity without affecting their size
and position. Once grouped, all shapes belonging to
that group become its member and a change applied on
one member works on all. Follow the given below steps
to group the drawing objects.
To group drawing objects:
Step 1. Select the object by clicking over it.
Step 2. Hold the Shift key and keep on selecting all
other objects by clicking on it to be included in
the group.

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 Step 3. Select a group tool from Drawing Object
Properties Toolbar (Fig. 2.23). Alternatively,
selecting from main menu Format > Group >
Fig. 2.29: Grouping tools in Group will also do same work.
Drawing Object Properties
toolbar Step 4. This process will group the selected drawing
objects.
There are four options under Group option. These are
Group, Ungroup, Enter Group, Exit Group. The icons as
shown in Fig. 2.29 for these options also present in the
Drawing Object Properties Toolbar.

Practical Activity 2.7

Group all items of Family tree created in Activity 2.5 and 2.6, in
the file “family1.odt”. Using the group, change the properties of
Rectangle (Fill color – lime yellow, border line – orange with 0.08”
width) and Line (color – black, Style – ultrafine dashed) used in
Family Tree.
Step 1. Open the document “family.odt” created earlier in Writer.
Step 2. Select all the lines. For this click on the first line, hold
the Shift key and keep on selecting other lines to group
them.
Step 3. Click on Group tool in Drawing Object Properties
toolbar. Observe that all the lines are grouped together
as shown in Fig. 2.30. Now change the color of all lines
grouped together to black.

Fig. 2.30: All the lines are grouped together and changed
the color to black

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 Step 4. Similarly select all the rectangles, group them and
change its fill color to lime yellow, border line to orange
color and border width to 0.08, as done in previous
activity. Observe that the color of all the rectangles
changed to orange colour as shown in Fig. 2.28.

Positioning Image in the Text

Once the task of creating, formatting, resizing and
grouping the drawing object is complete, it has to be
positioned in the document with text and other image
or drawings. Positioning of an image is controlled by
four settings.
(i) Arrangement
(ii) Anchoring
(iii) Alignment
(iv) Text Wrapping
These settings can be accessed using three ways –
by using Format menu, by using context menu after
right clicking on the object, by using Drawing Object
Properties Toolbar for changing the properties of the
drawings. Let us learn how to use Drawing Object
Properties Toolbar to position a drawing in the page.
Arrangement
In Overlapping objects arrangement determines the
position of the current drawing with respect to other
drawings or text. The Drawing Object Properties
toolbar consists of the arrangement tools as shown
in Fig. 2.31. These are the six tools in the order of
appearance from left to right, namely Bring to Front,
Fig. 2.31: Image arrangement
Forward One, Back One, Send to Back, To Foreground, tools in Drawing Object
To Background, which are briefly explained in Table 2.3. Properties
Table 2.3: Description of Image arrangement tools
Tool Effect
Bring to Front Place image on top of all objects / images
Bring image one level up, when there are
Forward One
overlapping images
Sends image one level down in overlapping
Back One
images
Place image at the bottom of all objects/
Send to Back
images

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 To Foreground Moves the drawing object in front of the text
To Background Moves the drawing object behind the text

Note – First four settings can be applied on an image

or drawing, but last two are available for drawings only.
Anchoring
It acts as a reference point for image or drawing.
Anchoring allows an image to retain its position to a
page, paragraph, character or frame. Anchor tool is
shown in Fig. 2.32. Clicking on the downward arrow
you can observe that an image can be anchored to Page,
Paragraph, Character or Frame. So whenever a page,
Fig. 2.32: Anchored tool with paragraph, character or frame is aligned, the anchored
its options image moves along with it.
Alignment
It allows the vertical or horizontal placement of the
image with respect to its anchor. Alignment tools are
located under Drawing Properties Toolbar, as shown
in Fig. 2.33. An image can be aligned in six different
styles – 3 horizontal and 3 vertical.
Text Wrapping
It allows the placement of image in relation to text. Text
Fig. 2.33: Alignment tools
Wrapping tools are available under Drawing Object
in Drawing Object Property Properties Toolbar. There are six choices, namely Wrap
toolbar off, Page Wrap, Optimal Page Wrap, Wrap left, Wrap
right, Wrap through, in the order of their appearance
from left to right as shown in Fig. 2.34. Table 2.4 briefly
describes these tools.
Fig. 2.34: Text wrapping tools
in Drawing Object Properties Table 2.4: Description of Text Wrapping tools
toolbar
Tool Wrapping Effect
Wrap off Text is placed above and below the image
Text flows around the image. Moving an
Page Wrap
image will rearrange the text on the page
In Page Wrap, if the space between image
Optimal Page
and margin is less than 2 cm then text will
wrap
not be placed on that side
Wrap left Text is placed on left side of the image
Wrap right Text is placed on the right side of the image
Wrap through Superimposes the image on the text

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summary notes
• In a digital document, a graphic or image is called
digital image.
• A digital image is represented in pixels.
• Predefined image can be inserted using Drag-
Drop method, Copy-Paste method or using Insert
Image dialog box.
• Inserting an image embeds a copy of the image in
the document.
• An image can be linked to a document using
Insert Image dialog box.
• Linking an image saves only the link of the image
instead of embedding the image. This saves
space in case multiple copies of the same image
are required.
• Image Toolbar can be used to modify an image.
Tools for filtering, resizing, cropping, deleting and
rotating an image are available in this toolbar.
• Drawing Tools are used to create pictures (objects),
such as Flowchart, Call out box, designs, etc.
• Properties of Object can be customised by resizing,
rotating, moving or editing.
• Drawing object properties can be modified either
at the time of creation (when you start drawing)
or after its creation.
• Properties when modified before creation, is
known as setting Default values.
• An object drawn using different shapes, can be
grouped to behave as single object.
• Writer provide various tools to arrange text and
image or drawing on a page.

Practical Exercises
Q.1 In Practical Exercise of chapter 1 (Question 3), you created a
school newsletter. Leaf-wise content of the newsletter were:
(a) School Information
(b) Result for Class X & XII in table
(c) School Achievement
(d) Students’ article(s)/poem(s)

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 notes For improving the visual appeal of the newsletter, add some
images in it. Following are the details given for adding images.
Leaf 1: Add a relevant photo
of school in bottom
right corner, as
shown in picture.
Photo should have
good contrast and
brightness. Add black
border to photo.
Leaf 2: Add photograph
of toppers of Class
X and Class XII.
Make adjustment to
display photograph
of student in
appropriate table
and in front of their
name. As this page
might be printed in
black, convert them
to grayscale with
proper contrast.
Leaf 3: Add few relevant
pictures in the given
style on this leaf. Apply at least two types of image filter
on the pictures.
Q.2 Master Udit is helping his drawing teacher to create digital
drawings. His teacher asks him to write down the steps
to create the following two drawings. In the first drawing,
objects are grouped and second drawing was created by
resizing objects of first drawing. How would you help her
to do so using drawing tools of Writer?

Q.3 Miss Roshni has Start

downloaded a flowchart
to be included in her Read Input
report. She asks for
your help, in creating
End of
an editable copy of Data
the flowchart. Write
steps to draw it using
Process Data Create Report
Drawing tools of Writer.

Read Input End

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Check Your Progress notes

A. Multiple choice questions

1. The text or image which appears faintly in the background

of a page is called _________________.
(a) Water mark (b) Trade mark
(c) Copyright (d) Embossing
2. JPG or JPEG in image format stands for _________________.
(a) Joint Photographic Experts Group
(b) Joint Picture Experts Group
(c) Joint Photographic Experts Graph
(d) Joint Photographic Experts General
3. In Drawing Object Properties toolbar, Grouping options
provided are _________________.
(a) Exit Group (b) Ungroup
(c) Enter Group (d) All of these
4. Which of the following is not the correct file extension for
an image file?
(a) GIF (b) JPEG
(c) Odt (d) PNG
5. Image toolbar does not provide a tool for _________________.
(a) filtering (b) cropping
(c) copying (d) flipping
B. Fill in the blanks

1. _________ tool cuts off non-desirable part of the image.

2. To change both brightness and contrast of the image
________________ tool can be used.
3. To simulate the effect of time on picture _____________
tool is used.
4. _________ place image at the bottom of all objects.
5. An image can be deleted by ____________ it and pressing
DELETE key.
6. In drawing tools, basic shapes list provide ____________
shapes.
7. Anchor act as _____________ point for a drawing.
8. There are ________________ options for aligning an image
horizontally.
9. The ___________ handles of image are used for rotating it.
10. Changing properties of an object _____________ creation,
retain them throughout the session
C. Short answer type questions

1. What is a digital image? How can you create one?

2. Write steps to insert an image from the gallery using
Drag and Drop method.

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 notes 3. How is resizing of image different from cropping it?
4. What are the tools available in drawing toolbar? Describe
any five tools.
5. How is linking of an image different from embedding?
Give a situation in which you would prefer to link
an image.
6. Write steps to change properties for drawing objects.
7. What are the benefits and drawbacks of grouping drawing
objects?
8. Describe any two tools from Drawing Object Properties
toolbar.
9. Write steps to insert an image in a basic drawing shape.
10. Write factors controlling positioning of an image in
a document.

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 3
CHAPTER
Advanced Features of Writer

As we all know that LibreOffice Writer is a word processor

that provides a variety of features. You have already
learned some of the features, such as formatting, editing,
inserting tables and images, styling the text and inserting
graphics in the document. In this chapter, you will be
learning some advanced features of LibreOffice Writer
that will be used to create professional documents. To
give the listing of the contents of the document, we can
use the Table of Contents feature, which is based on
different types of heading styles. LibreOffice Writer also
provides templates to create professional documents.
When multiple users are working on a single document,
the Track Changes feature can be used to keep a track
of the editing being done by each user.

Table of Contents
In Class IX, you had learned to insert tables in a
document, where the data was represented in a row and
column format. In this chapter, we will discuss Table of
Contents (ToC). You must have seen table of contents
in the beginning of your books. It contains a list of topics
and subtopics that have been covered in the book along
with page numbers.
Table of Contents, allows to insert an automated
table of contents in a document. The entries or contents
of this table are automatically taken from the headings
and sub headings of the document. Also, these contents
are hyperlinked in the table. So by clicking on any topic
in the table of contents, we can navigate directly to the
selected topic. But before creating table of contents,
you need to first understand the concept of hierarchy
of headings.

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 Hierarchy of Headings
LibreOffice Writer supports up to 10 levels of headings H1
to H10. These headings are applied to the headings of the
document. The following process will demonstrate how
to apply these headings to the headings in the document.
Step 1. Create a new document in
LibreOffice Writer and enter
the text Heading 1 to Heading
10 as shown in Fig. 3.1.
Step 2. Click on the Styles button
from the right side bar. Click
on the Paragraph Styles and
then Headings. The Styles
dialog window will display the
list of headings from Heading
1 to Heading 10 as shown in
Fig. 3.1.
Step 3. Place the cursor on Heading
1 as typed in the document.
Fig. 3.1: Hierarchy of 10 Headings Then click on the Heading 1
from the Styles dialog window.
Step 4. Repeat Step 2 for the words
Heading 2 to Heading 10.
Step 4. Observe that Heading 1 to
Heading 10 is applied to the
words Heading 1 to Heading
10 of the document and these
headings have changed as per
the applied style as shown in
Fig. 3.2. Observe the change
in Figs. 3.1 and 3.2.
Once the desired heading styles
are applied in the document, the same
Fig. 3.2: Document after applying 10 Headings hierarchy will be reflected in the table of
contents also.

Creating a Table of Contents (ToC)

Before you start creating the table of contents or ToC in
a document, you must ensure that proper heading
styles, such as Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 and so
on are inserted in the document. The correct ToC will be

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generated only if proper paragraph styling for headings
is applied to the document. Once a styled document is
created, follow the steps given below to insert the ToC in
the given document:
Step 1. Open the earlier
created file
“documentation.odt”.
Step 2. Assign proper heading
styles to the various
headings in the
document from the
Styles dialog box. For
example, assign the
heading styles as
shown in Fig. 3.3 in
the “documentation.
odt” file.
Step 3. Place the cursor at Fig. 3.3: Planning for assigning headings styles
the position where the
table of contents is to
be inserted. Usually, it
is in the beginning of
the document.
Step 4. From main menu,
select Insert > Table of
Contents and Index
> Table of Contents,
Index or Bibliography.
The Table of
Contents, Index and
Fig. 3.4: Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography dialog box
Bibliography dialog
box will be displayed as shown in Fig. 3.4.
Step 5. By default, the Type tab will be selected with
a preview of ToC on the right side of the dialog
box. On the left of the dialog box, is the Types
and Title section. In the Title text box, the
default name of the ToC, i.e. Table of Contents
is displayed. You can change this name, just
by typing in the text box. Type the desired title
of the ToC say “Contents” in the Title text box.
The title will be changed in the Preview section
as shown in Fig. 3.4.

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 By default, the checkbox
for Protected against
Manual Changes option is
selected. This protects the
ToC from any accidental
change. If this box is
unchecked, then the
contents of ToC can be
changed directly on the
document page, just like any
other text on the document.
In the Create Index or
Table of Contents List
box, the Entire Document
Fig. 3.5: Table of Contents inserted in a document
option is selected in the For
list box. So the ToC will be automatically created from
the headings and sub-headings of entire document.
The Outline check box is selected, so the complete
outline of the ToC is shown in the preview. Click and
deselect it if you do not want to see it.
Step 5. Click OK button. The Table of Contents will be
inserted in the document as shown in Fig. 3.5.
Note that all the headings will appear with page
numbers in the ToC. The entries in the ToC are
hyperlinked. Moving a mouse pointer over any of the
entries will show a tool tip stating to press Ctrl+click to
open hyperlink followed by the heading title. Pressing
Ctrl+click the cursor will directly move on to the selected
section heading.

Practical Activity 3.1

Rimjhim has created a report on Environmental Pollution
in LibreOffice Writer. She has applied proper heading styles
to all section headings of the document. Now, to add table of
contents to the document with the heading as Rimjhim’s Table
of Contents, follow the steps given below.
Step 1. Open the document in LibreOffice Writer.
Step 2. Select Insert > Table of Contents and Index > Table
of Contents, Index or Bibliography. The Table of
Contents, Index and Bibliography dialog box will be
displayed.

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 Step 3. In the Type the Titles text box, type Rimjhim’s Table of
Contents.
Step 4. Click OK. The Table of Contents will be inserted in
Rimjhim’s document.

Customisation of ToC
Once the ToC is inserted, we can
customise it according to our
requirements. To do so, right click
anywhere on the ToC and select
Edit Index option from the popup
menu as shown in Fig. 3.6.
The Table of Contents, Index
or Bibliography dialog box will
be displayed as shown in
Fig. 3.7. As seen in the previous
section, the dialog box has five
tabs – Type, Entries, Styles,
Columns and Background. The
options in these tabs can be used
to edit the table in various ways.
The changes made will be
reflected in the Preview section
of the dialog box. Fig. 3.6: Selecting Edit Index option from the pop up menu

Fig. 3.7: Selecting Entries Tab in Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography dialog window

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 Type Tab: is active by default after opening
the Table of Contents, Entries or
Bibliography dialog box to insert
the ToC.
Entries Tab: contains options to set styles for
various entries in the ToC.
Styles Tab: contains options to apply the desired
styles to the text of each level in the
table of contents. To apply a custom
paragraph style to any level, follow
the steps given below.
Step 1. Click and select the level from the Levels list
box.
Step 2. Click and select the desired paragraph style
from the Paragraph Styles list box.
Step 3. Click the OK button to apply the selected
paragraph style to the selected outline level.
The assigned style appears in square brackets
in the Levels
list and will
also be visible
in the Preview
pane.
Step 4. Click OK
button to apply
the selected
styles.
To remove the applied
paragraph styling,
select the desired level
in the Levels list box,
Fig. 3.8: Background Tab in Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography
dialog window and then click the
Default button.
Columns Tab: contains options to set the number
of columns that we want to have in
our ToC.
Background Tab: contains options to change the
background of the ToC as shown in
Fig. 3.8. The current background
color will be displayed in the Active
Color window.

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 To change the background color follow the following
steps.
Step 1. Click the Color button on the top of the
dialog box.
Step 2. Select the desired color from the Colors palette.
The selected color
will appear in the
New color window.
Step 3. To add the selected
color to the custom
palette, click Add
Button below the
color palette. Now,
the added color
can be re-used
whenever required.
Step 4. Click OK to apply
the desired color to
the ToC (Fig. 3.9).
To remove the Fig. 3.9: ToC with changed background color
background colour from
the ToC, click None button
present on the top of the
dialog box.
LibreOffice Writer also
allows to add a graphic as
a background of the ToC.
For this, select the Bitmap
button in the Background
tab of the dialog box.
Select the desired graphic
option and click OK button
Fig. 3.10: Adding graphic as a background of the ToC
(Fig. 3.10).

Maintaining a Table of Contents

As we know now that a table of contents is a snapshot
of the entire document at any given point in time. If any
changes are made to the document section headings
or page numbering, it should be reflected in the Table
of Contents as well. Maintaining a Table of Contents
consists of updating and deleting the ToC.

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 notes Updating the ToC
Writer does not update the ToC automatically.
The following activity shows how to update a
ToC manually.

Practical Activity 3.2

Some more sections are added in the document, accordingly the
ToC needs to be changed. To update a ToC manually, follow the
steps given below.
Step 1. Right-click anywhere in the ToC.
Step 2. From the pop-up menu as shown in Fig. 3.11, select
Update Index option. Writer updates the ToC so as to
reflect any changes made in the document. The reflected
changes in ToC is shown in Fig. 3.12.

Fig. 3.11: Selecting options for updating and editing a ToC

Fig. 3.12: Updated ToC

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Deleting ToC notes
To delete the ToC, right click on the table and select
Delete Index option from the pop-up menu. The ToC will
be deleted.

Practical Activity 3.3

Rimjhim has edited her document after the ToC was inserted.
Now she wants to update the ToC and also wants a pink coloured
background. Write the steps that Rimjhim should follow.
Step 1. To update the ToC, right-click anywhere in the ToC.
From the pop-up menu, select Update Index option as
shown in Fig. 3.11.
Step 2. To apply a coloured background, right click anywhere
on the ToC and select Edit Index option from the pop-
up menu.
Step 3. From the Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography
dialog box, select the Background tab. The current
background color will be displayed in the Active Color
window.
Step 4. Click the Color button on the top of the dialog box.
Step 5. Select the desired color from the Colors palette. The
selected color will appear in the New color window.
Step 6. Click OK to apply the desired color to the ToC.

Using Templates
A template is a preset layout that helps to create
professional and/or formal documents easily. In the
previous chapters, we have learned styling of different
document objects using templates. In this section, we will
learn to create document templates. Sometimes there is
a need to copy specific content including graphics, such
as logo of a company, image of a product or text, such
as tag lines of a product or a company, legal notices or
even headers and footers in multiple documents.
Instead of adding and then formatting the objects
in all documents, we can use templates. For example,
templates can be used to create a resume, chapter or
project report. A template can contain all the features
or objects that a regular document can contain – text,
graphics, styles and can even use any language. In a
template we can create and save defined headings, text
formats, styles, page numbers, headers and footers.
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