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Figure 8-3. The Insert Index/Table window

More precise control is gained via the Print window: select File → Print from the main menu, or simply press Ctrl-P. Here, you can choose a nondefault printer (if one is set up), a limited page range, or a different number of copies (the default is 1) for the current print job. You can also elect to print to a file.

Advanced formatting

Although the following sections introduce the strong formatting features of templates and styles below, other advanced formatting features are outside the scope of this chapter. It may help just the same to mention some of the useful features we're unable to cover.

Long-form documents benefit from frames, borders, and sections. These facilities help you format sidebars, set apart quotations, or highlight elements you wish to distinguish from the running text. They provide opportunities for adding colored or shaded backgrounds, changing fonts, and using multiple columns. Text contained in frames can even be set to flow through multiple frames inserted throughout a document. This is especially useful in formatting newsletters, for example, and making them more visually engaging.

Templates

A variety of stock templates and a facility for creating, editing, importing, and managing templates are included with OOoWriter. You can access templates by clicking File → New → Templates and Documents to open the Templates and Documents window. Then highlight the Templates icon on the left-hand index, as shown in Figure 8-4.

Figure 8-4. Templates and Documents—Templates

Here you can open one of the various stock templates and work away: edit and save it just as you would a normal document. Documents created this way, however, will not be linked to the template file from which they were derived. See "Template linkages," later in this chapter, for further detail.

Saving your own document as a template. Any of the documents you've created in your filesystem can perform as a template. Quite often users repurpose old files such as office memoranda, fax cover sheets, or business letters and use them to create new documents by simply replacing a few key words. This practice is fine and works well for many people; however, users could be more productive if they took full advantage of OOoWriter's template management facilities and particularly its linkage abilities.

Creating a new template. To create a new template, open a new text document (or use an existing document from your file store) and make the necessary formatting adjustments that you'd like to have in your template. Now, select File → Templates → Save from the main menu. This calls up the Templates window, which permits you to name the new template and select a template folder or category in which to store it. You can create any number of your own personal templates and store them this way.

Files saved as templates this way will automatically have the .stw file extension appended.

Editing templates . You can edit or generally treat a template file just like any other; however, we recommend editing a template with special care, because it can be easy to open a template file and then save it by mistake as a normal OOoWriter .sxw file, which would interfere with the template's linkages and storage location.

One direct way to edit a template is to select File → New → Templates and Documents. This opens up the Templates and Documents window directly in the Default folder. Click through the Templates folders to find the template you wish to edit. Click once to highlight it. This will light up the Edit button at the bottom of the window, second from the left. Clicking the Edit button will open your template, ready for edits. When you save via this route, the proper directory path and file format appear automatically in the Save dialog, so there's less opportunity to mishandle your template.

Managing templates. You can also save any of your own documents as a template or, later, move them into one