Wednesday, August 5, 2020

A new Writer Outline folding mode in LibreOffice

Jim Raykowski, one from LibreOffice developers, realized so much requested feature - Writer Outline folding mode. You should enable Experimental features in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced dialog to see "Show outline content visibility button" checkbox in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice Writer ▸ View dialog.
After checking it you'll can see a button with arrow near any selected heading in your document. Click on it to fold all text from the current heading to next heading. Right click on it to fold all text from current heading to next the same level heading with all its subheadings.
Look at videos created by Jim (I downloaded it from bug report) below for some explanation:

It will be available in next 7.1 release in early February 2021.
Thanks Jim for your great work!

14 comments:

  1. Yes! Very happy to see progress on this feature. I hope someone can pass on our thanks to Jim. When outline folding works close to Word I will have no more need for Word.

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    1. Any other tips in order to enable outline folding? I have Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced Experimental = enabled & Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice Writer ▸ View > Show outline content visibility button checked. I even added both "Show outline content" & "Toggle Outline Content" buttons to a custom toolbar, but still I don't see the new outline folding arrow to the left of any paragraphs that have Outline Level >= 1. Thanks in advance.

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    2. What LO version do you use, Andrew?

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    3. Hi Roman - the latest beta
      Version: 7.0.4.2 (x64)
      Build ID: dcf040e67528d9187c66b2379df5ea4407429775
      CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19042; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
      Locale: en-AU (en_AU); UI: en-GB
      Calc: CL

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    4. Andrew, it will available only in 7.1 version and more

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    5. whoops - pasted wrong details. I am using
      Version: 7.1.0.0.beta1 (x64)
      Build ID: 828a45a14a0b954e0e539f5a9a10ca31c81d8f53
      CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19042; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
      Locale: en-AU (en_AU); UI: en-GB
      Calc: CL

      and yet, the folding doesn't work, or I don't understand how to make it work.

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  2. I tried it in 7.1.0.2, which sort of works. Thanks, Jim!
    But may I suggest a small change?
    Folding (with or without right click) only seems to fold regular text, not subheadings. This may sometimes be what we want. But if I have three levels of headings and fold level 1, it means I don't want to see level2 headings.

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    Replies
    1. Better to write about your suggestion to our Bugzilla - bugs.documentfoundation.org

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  3. On MacOS the LibreOffice "Preferences-LibreOffice Writer-View" shows "Outline mode" but without any checkbox yet. When will it be available for MacOS?

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    1. Let me check, possibly it's a some bug in LibreOffice for macOS only

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  4. When will it be available for Mac? My preferences shows "Outline mode" without any checkbox

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  5. Have 7.1.1.2 Linux. No Outline mode, only a label in options.

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  6. FC34
    libreoffice :
    Version: 7.1.4.2
    Build ID: 10(Build:2)
    CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.12; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
    Locale: en-US (C.UTF-8); UI: en-US
    Calc: threaded

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  7. Anonymous12:13 PM

    First of all - thank you for wonderfull feature!!! I was using outline in Word often, this is a good substitute. Maybe sad, that it is still only experimental.
    However it seems, that when it is enabled, custom character styles asignment stops working, I'm using 7.3.5.2 (x64) on Windows 10. When disabled in options it works again. Or did I miss something?
    Best regards,
    Karel Klapka


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