Description: You CANNOT expect one to spend hours to do a simple thing like to create a document with sections where one switches from portrait to landscape, moves from multi-columns to single column, has different page number styles per section and so on. I have been using OO/LO since 2009 and have not been able to master this. Either provide a detailed instruction on how to do this, or make it simpler. For on thing I cannot figure out how to even see where the section starts or ends. If I change the page to Landscape from Portrait I can see it, but if I change ti back to Portrait I am lost again - can you not put a solid black line there or something to show the change definitively. If I change from one to two columns, then the previous section also changes to two columns. No amount of googling and reading of help has been able to help me. This is driving me NUTS! Actual Results: cannot manage sections Expected Results: A section should be a document within a document. If it inherits from the previous section that that should be displayed in some way that is obvious. MOST important point: it should be very clear where section breaks are. PLEEEEASE!!!! I beg you on my knees! Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: [Information automatically included from LibreOffice] Locale: en-US Module: TextDocument [Information guessed from browser] OS: Linux (All) OS is 64bit: yes
You are mixing up/combining two different ideas here. I think that mostly you are referring to page styles (landscape/portrait, and possibly columns). True sections (in the LO sense of sections - which is very different from MS Office) have limited value in LO (short columns). Page breaks are indicated (and managed) by dashed blue lines in between pages. They can also be managed in the paragraph properties (typically of the first paragraph on the page). You want the "text flow" tab with "insert page break before" and also "with page style xxxx". So there are many different workflows you could use for this, but here is one way that might seem logical. 0.) create a new page style if you aren't using one of the defaults (styles menu - manage styles). 1.) Insert menu - page break 2.) Click on the blue line between the pages and "edit page break" 3.) Tell it what page style you want this next page to be. 4.) Make any changes to the page style, like headers/footers etc. In terms of actually seeing where a true section starts, I use the "background/fill" feature of the section while working to confirm where it starts/ends. In terms of previous sections turning into columns, I'd guess that is actually page styles again. Sections are used to create partial-page columns, and page styles of course can define columns for the entire page. You would need two different page styles (separated by a "page break with page style yyyy") in order to keep the columns differentiated. I think you will mostly be helped by replacing "sections" with "page styles" in your mind (and google searches). P.S. I would not classify a document with columns and mixed portrait/landscape as a simple document. Additionally, this entire area (sections/page styles) is a nightmare in terms of compatibility with MS formats. I hope you are saving in .odt formats for this, or you will be adding to your frustrations. Please attach an example document if you want more specific help.
The help pages seem reasonably clear to me. -https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Changing_Page_Orientation_Landscape_or_Portrait -https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Using_Sections
This is Invalid bug report because it's not bug report, but some support request. Please don't use Bugzilla for this. Use http://ask.libreoffice.org/. Only if you have clear steps and issue you are welcome to report here.
Also, if you find documentation not sufficient, you may ask to be updated. But with specific issues. If you find what exactly is missing in the Help link, we may conform this one as Documentation issue.