How-to: different headers and footers on even and odd pages in LibreOffice

LibreOffice Writer is a great Free Open Source tool for writing, no one can argue. Its features are good for both the home users who simply need to write a note to a friend, and to professional authors who need to write texts that many other people read.

Of course, professional texts should look professional. LibreOffice Writer has tools for that! Some time ago I told you how you can insert page numbers in the footers or headers of your pages. Then I told you how you can start page numbering from a certain number – useful for books that have title page or pages created with other tools. Today is the time to uncover yet another useful feature of LibreOffice Writer.

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Take a book from your shelf and open it. Look at its headers and footers. Do you notice anything? More often than not you would see that odd and even pages have different headers/footers. For example, page numbers can be on the left on odd and on the right on even pages. Can you do the same in LibreOffice Writer? Yes, you can!

Open the text of your book with LibreOffice Writer and scroll to the place where your odd and even pages should have different headers or footers. That is important since your book may have different sections with different styles, as is explained in another article. You need to apply changes I describe below to each relevant style you have in your file.

Now select menu Format – Page and switch to tab Header or Footer, depending on what you need to have. I will change the header in this article, but you can apply the same steps to change your footer too. Ensure you have the checkbox Header on ticked and Same content left/right unticked.

Setup header or footer for the page

Confirm your choice with the OK button. Now you are ready to edit your headers.

Click the header section on the first page and put whatever content you want to see there. Let's put page number on the left and some text on the right. If you need to have them exactly on the right and left, it is a good idea to insert a table with invisible borders

Inserting table helps formatting

Format the content of each cell separately.

Page number on the left, text on the right

Now scroll to the second page and repeat the steps for headers you want to see there.

Page number on the right, text on the left

Your task is now complete. Check the results on the print preview.

Headers are different on odd and even pages

Isn't it easy?

What other LibreOffice tricks do you know?