So, I’m trying to convert a Libre Office Writer document to PDF. When I do so, it loses the right justification. Microsoft Word does a better job of it, but when I save the document in Libre Office as a *.docx, and reopen in Word, it loses the page templates. Anyone have any ideas?
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I played around with the export settings, to preserve document structure, and it’s better now.
[Update a few more minutes later]
OK, I found the problem. It exports it just fine. The problem arises when I try to edit the PDF with Libre Office. It undoes the justification when it pulls it into Draw, and then it re-exports it that way.
[Update]
Here is my real problem. I wouldn’t have to edit it if I could make it do what I want in the first place. I’m trying to start the first page of the document in a certain style, and it refuses to do it. I can only start that style on the second page, with a blank first page. If I had a good PDF editor, I could just remove the first blank page after the conversion, but apparently I have to lay out money for that. It may ultimately be my only solution if I can’t get Libre Office to do what I want, though.
[Update late morning]
Someone on Twitter helped me figure out how to do it. I’ve finally got the document looking the way I want.
I know you hate this type of comment, but OSX comes standard with a (weird ui) pdf editor – preview. If you open the pdf in preview, you can delete the first page and then save it again.
Do you know someone with a mac? I could do it for you if you only need it done once. (Unlikely, I know)
Do you save your document as a PDF or use a print-to-pdf pseudo-printer? If the latter, can you try leaving a blank page at the start of the document and printing from page 2? You can definitely do that in Windows but I don’t know enough about Linux printing, although I assume you can.
I also don’t know if it’d give you the results you want, but trying it means you’re only out a few sheets of paper if it doesn’t work.
Oh, a trick I remember from MS Office that may or may not work with your tools: make page 1 a section(I believe “section” is the right term, at least in MS Office), and the rest a second section, with the formatting you want. Then only print section 2.
It wasn’t about printing it; I have to provide a PDF to a publisher. Anyway, I finally solved the problem in Libre Office.
https://xkcd.com/979/
Little Late but few years ago found PDFTK as a useful tool. It a command line pdf tool that can do a lot of manipulating of pdf pages and do batch processing. Also has some simple GUI to control the command line. Found it along with Imagemagik as a powerful combination.
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
I tried installing that, but had problems doing so in Fedora. Anyway, I solved the problem with Libre Office.
Don’t describe it; I’m sure nobody else will ever want to know.