Reed College
Reed College

Help Desk

Information Technology

Writing Your Thesis in Libre Office

Preface

The LibreOffice thesis template is based on the Microsoft Word thesis template, as LibreOffice itself is based on Word. For that reason, this page mainly catalogues the differences between using the LibreOffice template and the Word template. For a basic understanding of this type of template, please refer to the Microsoft Word help page. 

Why use Libre Office? 

  • Open source, free, no licensing
  • Can be used by non-Mac Operating Systems 
  • Same on all platforms

Conversion

Saving a LO file as .docx and opening it in Word will break it! Opening a .docx file in LO will also break it! Save your file as .odt. 

Pagination

Unlike in Word, all pages in Libre Office are in a style that determines their characteristics.

  • To convert a page to a different style, click anywhere in the text, and from the styles panel double click the style you want.

  • There is no “Odd Page Break”!!! Instead, go to Insert (top menu) > More Breaks > Manual Break > and select preferred page style. Front Matter and the first page of chapters will be in “First Page”, the rest will be in “Default Page Style”.
  • First Page Style/Front Matter
    • The first page of each section of the Front Matter (Title page, Table of Contents, etc) should be in First Page Style to ensure that there are no page numbers. 
    • The first page of each section of the Back Matter (Bibliography, Apendices, etc) should also be in First Page Style. 
    • Page layout should be set to “Only Right” to ensure odd page breaks. To check the Page Layout, right click > “Page Style” > “Page”. 
    • Next style should be set to First Page.
    • Troubleshooting First Pages: 
      • If page numbers appear in First Page Style, go to “edit style” and set page numbers to “None”. 
      • If page numbers continue, make sure the page is in First Page Style, no Right Page. 
  • Chapter Formatting
    • The first page of each chapter, including the introduction, should be set to First Page style to remove page numbers. The following pages should be in Default Page Style. 
    • At the bottom of the first page of each chapter, insert a Manual Page Break set to Default Page Style, so the rest of the chapter will show page numbers. (Insert > More Breaks > Manual Break > Default Page Style.)
      • If this doesn’t work, click anywhere on the second page of the chapter, go to the page styles panel, and double click on Default Page Style.
    • If the page number just says “Page Number”, go to View in the top menu and deselect “Field Names".

Styles

  • All images, tables, etc are in Graphics style. Otherwise, text styles operate the same way as Word.