At 20:17 08/05/2007 -0500, Jerry Teal wrote:
i just downloaded openoffice.org so i could go to civil service website for louisiana to fill it in by typeing and then saving it to a cd. the form is seven sheets long and stuff to be filled out on each side of every sheet making it a 14 page document.now i'm new to all of this.i don't know why but the first two pages are displayed one on top of another.i've tried saving the document to my desktop and opening it with openoffice.org but i get the same result.what am i doing wrong?...i haven't got the foggiest idea.
I'm somewhat guessing here, since you haven't pointed us to the actual file concerned. But if you are talking about, say, their job application form, it seems to be available as a Word (.doc) document file or else as a PDF file. So I take it that you have downloaded the Word version and wish to use OpenOffice Writer to complete it.
Unfortunately, there are always differences when you convert a document from one format to another - in this case from Word's format to Writer's - and you will see differences, small or large, in the document's appearance. I have had a quick look at one document, and I can see what you mean: parts of the first page are superimposed and useless as they stand. The only way out of this is to reformat the document yourself in Writer so that it looks as close as possible to how the Word document would look in Word. This is no small task.
So how do you know what it would look like in Word? There are two ways to find out. One is to download the PDF version of your form as well, which will presumably be similar in appearance to the Word version as displayed by Word. The other way (if you are using Windows, as it seems) is to download and install the freeware Word viewer from the Microsoft web site. Using this, you can display the Word document you already have and use this as a guide for reformatting a copy in Writer.
If you wish to follow this method, you will need to remove any write protection that is present on any section of the document you need to modify. In Writer, go to Format | Sections..., select each section in turn in the window on the left, and remove the tick in the Protected box under "Write protection". You may wish or have to send the form back in hard copy, but if you intend to send back an electronic file (or to print it from another system without OpenOffice), you will have a further problem. If you send a Writer (.odt) document, they will say they cannot open it. If you save your document in Word format as a .doc file, what they see in and print from Word may not be quite what you see in Writer. (You can check this, of course, if you have installed the Word viewer as above.) One solution to this is to export your document as a PDF instead and send that file. PDFs are designed to be consistent across platforms and operating systems, so they should see what you see. (Again, you can check this by opening the resulting PDF yourself in Adobe Reader.)
I trust this helps. Brian Barker --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
