Re: [libreoffice-users] Automatically generating and updating many similar documents

Thanks so much for that.
This allows me to make abridged (some parts left out) manuals by just 
picking the sections I want from a complete manual and all numbering and 
table of contents adjusts correctly.

Hmm. Cross references don't necessarily survive.

Steve

On 11/02/18 06:15, Jean-Francois Nifenecker wrote:
> Hello R.
>
> Le 04/02/2018 à 11:52, R. Diez a écrit :
> > A friend of mine writes datasheets and user manuals for many similar
> > devices with Microsoft Word 2010. Many sections (legalese, company logo,
> > some device features) are exactly the same across many documents.
> >
> > Maintaining so many copies of the same text is a pain. If you want to
> > fix or enhance something, you have to manually update many copies in
> > many documents. Just to clarify: these are not just short database
> > fields, but complete text sections with subsections, full formatting, 
> > etc.
>
> This is a quite common need. LibO Writer has a helper for that: linked 
> sections.
>
> In LibO Writer a Section is just that: a text portion which can be set 
> differently from the other parts of the text. For instance, using a 
> section allows to have a multi-columns part between full width text 
> parts.
>
> Here, we're using the section links possibilities.
>
> 1. Create a new document using Writer and put in it each an every 
> recurring piece of text. Format that text exactly as you wish it to 
> appear.
> 2. Enclose each piece of text within its own section:
> -- select the text
> -- menu Insert > Section
> 3. Give the section a nameful name and that's it (click Insert).
> You notice that the section is surrounded with pale grey lines. When 
> the cursor is in the section, the status bar shows the section name 
> (on the right).
>
> Save the document (probably better have it in some fixed place as it 
> will be used as a reference by the others.)
>
> Let's say its name is RefDoc.odt
>
>
> Open a document which must contain some text part as the one stored in 
> RefDoc.odt. Let's call it Target.odt.
>
> Open Target.odt
> 1. Create an empty section here also.
> Put the cursor in some empty paragraph, the Insert > Section
> 2. Give the section a nameful name
> 3. Go to the dialog Link area and check Link.
> Use the Browse button and select RefDoc.odt created above.
> 4. In the Section list you see the list of the sections present in 
> RefDoc.odt. Select the wanted section. Click Insert
>
> You're done! The new Target.odt section now holds the reference text, 
> including its formatting.
>
> Note that the new section in Target.odt may be password protected. 
> This might be of interest when manipulating legal documents for instance.
>
>
> From now on, any change in the source RefDoc.odt sections text will be 
> propagated to the linked section of the target documents.
>
>
> HTH,


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