How to Prepare Labels with Libreoffice.org by Bruce Byfield.
This tutorial covers using templates, how to import images and use text, in-depth instructions on using mailmerge and more.
For more reading on using labels with Libreoffice:
Creating fancy labels with Libreoffice
Mail merge address labels with Libreoffice
Working with Barcode with Libreoffice/Openoffice
Have more questions about using labels, feel free to visit the forums and engage the community in helping you
In LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, tables of contents (ToCs) are grouped with index and bibliographical entries under Insert -> Indexes and Tables. All of them are created with a similar procedure, but the details vary for each case. Tables of contents in particular allow much more options for formatting than are available in MS Office.
The basic steps are easy:
Whether you’re in business or school, outlines can be an essential part of your writing. You may plan a longer piece of writing in one, or use one as an executive summary. Either way, you should find the Outline Numbering dialog in Writer’s Tool menu useful. However, it requires some setup before it is ready to use.
Several versions ago, I would have suggested the second option of creating the list styles that you need, then attaching them to paragraph styles, using the Number tab. Now, you can still take this option, but, if you do, you must start by creating your own styles for each outlining level first.
The reason for this extra work is that, in recent versions of LibreOffice the ability to attach list styles to Headings 1-10 paragraph styles has been disabled. Presumably, this change was made to avoid confusion with the Outline Numbering dialog. However, the change means that this second option now requires additional work to obtain the same results that you can get much more easily with Outline Numbering. This second option is much better kept for lists within the text of a document, which is what it is designed for.
OK, LibreOffice is free for the download, and you can install it on as many different machines as you choose. But a free price and a free license aren’t much good if the software doesn’t have the features you want.
Happily, that’s usually not a concern with LibreOffice or its predecessor, OpenOffice. Although many people assume that a free application must be inferior to one that they pay for, a comparison of LibreOffice with Microsoft Office (MSO) proves that the opposite is often true. Sometimes, MSO has features that LibreOffice lacks, but, just as often, it’s LibreOffice that has more tools than MSO.
However, unless you’re concerned about a must-have feature, there’s usually no need for a point by point comparison. Focusing on performance and high-level interface choices alone, I can think of at least seven reasons to choose LibreOffice over MS Office:
List styles are an open secret in LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org. If you press the F11 key to open the Styles and Formatting palette, they’re in plain site at the end of the buttons for the five types of style – yet hardly anyone goes beyond their basic use or even uses them at all. However, if you take a closer look, there are all sorts of ingenious uses for list styles.
Like any type of style, lists styles save time. Change the style, and in seconds you change the formatting of every instance that you use the style throughout the document, instead of hunting down each instance and changing it manually.
Many users of LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are familiar with paragraph and character styles. By contrast, page styles are less familiar. However, if you take the time to set up page styles once in a template, the effort can automate your formatting for years in dozens of documents.
You’ll find page styles in the same place as the rest of the styles, in the Styles and Formatting floating window available by selecting Format -> Styles and Formatting in the menu or pressing the F11 key. It’s the fourth button from the left in the floating window, between Frame and List styles, the other two less commonly used types of styles.
“A whole article on page numbering?” someone asked when I said I was doing this article. “Isn’t that kind of basic?”
The answer is that, at the simplest level, it is. However, add different numbering styles, restarting numbering, or automating numbering, and the apparently basic topic quickly becomes more complicated. Set up a master document, and still another dimension is added. What at first seems like a straightforward task has far more options than many users imagine.
Moreover, in LibreOffice (or OpenOffice.org, for that matter), generally, you’ll want to put page numbers in headers or footers, so they are separate from the rest of the text on a page and easy to read. Setting up a header or foot is not difficult, but it does add another step or two to the apparently basic task of adding a page number.
There are something like a squillion and one different Avery® and Avery-compatible address labels you can buy, and with the open source LibreOffice productivity suite you can easily create your own custom fancy return address labels.
If you’re wondering what LibreOffice is, it’s an offshoot of the popular OpenOffice productivity suite. Development on OpenOffice has stagnated for the past couple of years, and most of the key OpenOffice developers have gone to LibreOffice. You can use either one for this howto. Both are free of cost, and are excellent fully-featured office suites.
Today we are going to learn how to create a page of custom return address labels, with images and custom fonts.