I would also love to see LibreOffice address this issue of centering text between the top and bottom margins without using something such as frames (which seems to not obey my bottom margin setting).  

If it could be made into a command that could be assigned to a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut - that would be greatly appreciated.

I routinely have documents (letters) where the first page is formatted with say a 2 inch top margin - sometimes they are one page, sometimes they go to two or three or more pages.  The ability to center the typed text between the top and bottom margin allows one to have a nice looking one-page letter without having to futz about with adding extra white space anywhere to even out the letter on the page.  It should just apply to the current page only and end at a page break - whether inserted manually or not and would best be accessed menu-wise through the Format - Page options.

Thank you for your consideration.

mdg

So - setting this to 'Higest' 'Critical' priority does not help ;-)  What would help a lot is getting hands dirty with code - please come to the #libreoffice-dev channel or irc.freenode.net, or to libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org, and we will gladly help you to find the place where to code.

Thanks Jan. I'm a writer, not a coder. Believe me, if I were able, I would love to contribute code. It's not a sense of entitlement that prevents me, only a lack of ability. I haven't written code since 1983.

However, show some examples of code similar to what you might need, and I'll take a look.

[This is an automated message.]
This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it
started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is
changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back
to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases.
Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1

more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html

Using LO 3.5 I just encountered the same issue. The need for simple (one click) vertical centering of a PAGE is common for a number of types of text and the lack of this feature causes a undue amount of work for the user.

This is a mission-critical feature for office work.  Having to make a frame in a text doc is just craziness.

(In reply to comment #8)
> This is a mission-critical feature for office work.  Having to make a frame in
> a text doc is just craziness.

For the non-writers who think this isn't important, consider that it's not just for posters, etc.  I need this to make exhibit cover sheets for a court filing, and effectively turning my odt into an html page isn't workable.

Inserting LFs to do it, currently.  Bleh.

Hi Joe, I also initially marked the importance as high and major. I agree with you. Jan Holesovsky demoted the "bug" but I disagree with his/her decision. This is such a basic compatibility issue that it should be on the front burner. Rather than spending the time fussing and fiddling over the "importance" of the bug, I would truly appreciate it if Jan got his or her hands dirty solving the issue.

+1 I need too. Are you going to add this feature?

Talk about inconvient. Format/Alignment gives you horizontal center choices, but the vertical choices are grayed out. Even WP for DOS made verticle centering easier that using frames. Libre Office stands out for this ackwardness. And no, I'm not capable of programming for you. I'w just trying to vertical center a title page for a story I'm working on.

I am an author and am formatting a book in which I would like to center the title, section names, chapter titles, etc., vertically as well as horizontally.

I wish I could write code and would be happy to help with LibreOffice's development if I could in any way. Thank you for your hard work. I was extremely happy to find LibreOffice earlier this year and like using the program.

For now, I guess I will enter a bunch of carriage returns to get the text down around where it should be, and see how it comes out when I export it to epub...

Right. The bleeding instant Kingsoft Office offers this feature, I'm dropping Libre Office like a red hot potato. Libre won't miss me, and I won't miss Libre. But hey, you've got personas. Wow. Just wow.

This is an essential basic feature to a version 1 of any competent word processor. Please somebody get on this and stop wasting time with "features" that only one in a thousand people would even notice.

By the way, this should be a page formatting/style property, not a paragraph property.

Also, it should be applicable not only to the main page area but also (independently) to headers and footers. Currently both header and footer text is only top-aligned in their respective space. Ever notice that it would make far more sense for footer text to be top-aligned but header text to be bottom-aligned? Yup.

Really? That's what we get after how many years? It's now "Inherited from OOs"? Does that mean that in 2019 someone will add "Keywords"? Tell me this problem is going to be sorted out someday soon...

I'm dealing with this issue too.  Cover letters, title pages, signs, there are actually quite a few reasons you might want something centered vertically not just horrizonatally.  Currently, it's unlikely anyone can vertically center without faking it (new lines or something) or looking it up online.  I did that latter and read through about 10 "tutorials" because I couldn't believe that was REALLY how it was supposed to be done.

'Writer' remains riddled with and crippled by silly bugs that they've known about for years, all while they obsess over Calc.

But we have updated document styles and a new icon set! Yay!

If you want to vertically center text, there are a couple work-arounds. They're called "Free Office", by Softmaker; and Kingsoft Office, both free and both already already outstripping 'Writer'.

Maybe in another 3 to 4 years they'll actually do something about Writer's abject mediocrity.

@Patrick 
ranting won't help fixing

I disagree, It's gotten a response, which is more than a dozen polite requests have gotten. Sometimes some hard-hitting criticism (which you spin as ranting) is just what's needed. 

It's going on four years since this bug was reported.

As I see it, whining about criticism also "won't help fixing".

@Patrick

I'm not a developer but I suppose that if a bug sticks here since OOo era, maybe the fix it's not that easy to provide.

anyway, there are 2 more constructive ways to help fixing a bug, rather than ranting of giving hard hitting criticism:

1- learn the code yourself and try hacking it

2- make a donation or start fund raising for developers involved in the fix

@Tommy27

1.) Any time a developer wants to learn and take over my work, I'll take over theirs.

2.) Why don't you donate to me and fund raise for me, and that will allow me to learn code and fix the problem. Short of that, I am pleased to announce that I don't charge for my input, my filing of bugs or my exasperation. It's all free. :-)

just to say that in the past I've donated for bugs that were important to me, bugs that were inherited from OOo and that now are fixed in LibO while still stick to AOO.

Have you donated to this one? If you have, then I suggest doing so again, since your last donation (if you donated) accomplished *squat*. In the meantime, my offer stands. Donate enough to me, and I will spend 100% of the donations to teach myself the necessary code and I will fix this bug (or die trying).

Since that always seems to be the escape clause, right? 

Whenever criticism heats up, somebody always writes: Donate, fix it yourself or shut up. Well, I'm calling your bluff. Donate enough money to me so that I can take the time off necessary to learn to code (I used to know basic and Pascal) and I will fix this problem.

Put up or shut up. 

Short of that, and I will continue to point out that this bug should have been solved years ago and that any claim that Libre can convert to and from doc files is utterly bogus until this is fixed. Until it's fixed, I can screw up conversion with just one (1) character -- a vertically centered '.'. Period.

I've been working on printing labels - and I thought _that_ was ridiculous: 1) create a spreadsheet, 2) create a database, 3) copy spreadsheet to database, 4) create a label document, 5) try to format the label "frames", 6) document merge database table into label document.  WTF?!!!!  But then, simply trying to apply vertical centering to the "frames" in step 5 is even more ridiculous - no vertical centering!!!

What an embarrassment, to suggest that someone use LibreOffice for wordprocessing...

How is possible: After 3 years of bug, one easy thing like vertical align is not done... -.-"

Adding self to CC if not already on

The most frustrating thing, I find, is that Format > Alignment, always displays Top, Center, Bottom, and they're always greyed out.

So tantalizing! So infuriating!

This feature would be useful since I imported a document that had a title page that was centered on the page vertically and horizontally.  It only horizontally centered the text.  The vertical was skipped, so the title was on the top line of the page instead of the middle.  At first, I thought it was a bug, but it turns out it is just a missing feature.

I'd like to vote to have this put into LibreOffice.  It can only help in making it even more robust and attractive to an even larger user base.  The more ease of use features and compatibility, the more likely people will jump on board and use it.

I think this request is useless. I prefer to use frame to set a title on the page, it is a more flexible way to vertically place a text on the page. From my own experience, a title is almost never vertically centered when you have other texts or images on the same page.

Best regards. JBF

(In reply to Jean-Baptiste Faure from comment #33)
> I think this request is useless. I prefer to use frame to set a title on the
> page, it is a more flexible way to vertically place a text on the page. From
> my own experience, a title is almost never vertically centered when you have
> other texts or images on the same page.
> 
> Best regards. JBF

You may think that all you like -- if all you do is center titles, but the feature is used for more than that.

Secondly, if LibreOffice ever wants to be compatible with doc, docx files, or comparable with any other modern wordprocessor like, lets say, Softmaker Office, the ancient WordPerfect or WPS Office, it ignores this feature to its own detriment.

This is basic functionality that's available in every other modern Word-processor with one (1) click.

Why this still hasn't been addressed is beyond me...

Best, PGillespie

Created attachment 117574 [details]
A word document with a vertically centered period (.) .

(In reply to Jean-Baptiste Faure from comment #35)
> It is so important that there is not even test file attached to this bug
> report allowing to check how LibreOffice actually handle foreign documents
> with this configuration of the title page.
> Please attach test documents.
> 
> Best regards. JBF

I find your complaint that no test file was provided snarky and facetious at best. How many years have you had (or anyone) to easily test this yourself. When was this reported? 2011? (I'm not on the page right now). However, I'll be attaching 3 files for your enjoyment. They are comprised of one, that is, one character. A vertically centred period (.). 

Libre Office screws it up every time.

Frankly, I find this humorous. While LO devs fuss away at mind-bloggling, spread-sheet compatibility-minutia (and I admire them for it) I can still screw up compatibility with one little digit.

Documents to follow.

(In reply to Commit Notification from comment #48)
> Justin Luth committed a patch related to this issue.


The operative words being "related to".

This patch doesn't solve the initial bug report. It's still not possible to vertically center text without a doctorate in rocket science. It should be possible to vertically center text with the same one-click ease of every other modern word processor.

*This* BUG, 36117, still stands.

Changing priority back to 'medium' since the number of duplicates is lower than 5