Getting Started Guide
Chapter 12
Creating Web Pages
Saving Documents as HTML Files
This document is Copyright © 2010–2016 by the LibreOffice Documentation Team. Contributors are listed below. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), version 3 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), version 4.0 or later.
All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.
Jean Hollis Weber | Peter Schofield | Ron Faile Jr. |
Olivier Hallot |
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Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to the Documentation Team’s mailing list: documentation@global.libreoffice.org
Note: Everything you send to a mailing list, including your email address and any other personal information that is written in the message, is publicly archived and cannot be deleted.
This chapter is adapted and updated from Chapter 12 of Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3.3. The contributors to that chapter are:
Agnes Belzunce | Peter Hillier-Brook | Ian Laurenson |
Peter Kupfer | Jean Hollis Weber | Linda Worthington |
Published 22 June 2016. Based on LibreOffice 5.1.
Some keystrokes and menu items are different on a Mac from those used in Windows and Linux. The table below gives some common substitutions for the instructions in this chapter. For a more detailed list, see the application Help.
Windows or Linux | Mac equivalent | Effect |
Tools > Options menu selection | LibreOffice > Preferences | Access setup options |
Right-click | Control+click and/or right-click depending on computer setup | Open a context menu |
Ctrl (Control) | ⌘ (Command) | Used with other keys |
F5 | Shift+⌘+F5 | Open the Navigator |
F11 | ⌘+T | Open the Styles and Formatting window |
HTML capabilities in LibreOffice include saving and exporting existing documents in HTML format.
This chapter describes how to do the following in Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw:
•Create hyperlinks within a document and to other documents such as web pages, PDFs, and other files.
•Save documents as web pages (HTML documents) and create web pages using the Web Wizard included with LibreOffice.
•Create, edit, and save web pages using Writer/Web.
When creating a document that you plan to deliver as a web page, you need to consider the following:
•In an HTML document, hyperlinks are active (clickable), but other cross-references inserted by LibreOffice are not active links.
•An object such as an image is saved as a separate file. However, if that object has been placed in a frame (for example, with an associated caption), it is not saved and does not appear in the HTML document; instead, the name of the frame appears.
Hyperlinks stored within a file can be either relative or absolute.
A relative hyperlink says, Here is how to get there starting from where you are now (meaning from the folder in which your current document is saved) while an absolute hyperlink says, Here is how to get there no matter where you start from.
An absolute link will stop working if the target is moved. A relative link will stop working if the start and target locations change relative to each other. For instance, if you have two spreadsheets in the same folder linked to each other and you move the entire folder to a new location, an absolute hyperlink will break but a relative one will not.
To change the way that LibreOffice stores the hyperlinks in your file, select Tools > Options > Load/Save > General and choose if you want URLs saved relatively when referencing the File System, or the Internet, or both.
Calc will always display an absolute hyperlink. Do not be alarmed when it does this even when you have saved a relative hyperlink. This ‘absolute’ target address will be updated if you move the file.
Note
Make sure that the folder structure on your computer is the same as the file structure on your web server if you save your links as relative to the file system and you are going to upload pages to the Internet.
Tip
When you rest the mouse pointer on a hyperlink, a help tip displays the absolute reference, because LibreOffice uses absolute path names internally. The complete path and address can only be seen when you view the result of the HTML export (saving the spreadsheet as an HTML file), by loading the HTML file as text, or by opening it with a text editor.
When you type text (such as a website addresses or URL) that can be used as a hyperlink, and then press the spacebar or the Enter key, LibreOffice automatically creates the hyperlink and applies formatting to the text (usually a color and underlining). If this does not happen, you can enable this feature by going to Tools > AutoCorrect Options > Options on the menu bar and selecting the URL Recognition option.
If you do not want LibreOffice to convert a specific URL to a hyperlink, go to Edit > Undo Insert on the menu bar, or press Ctrl+Z immediately after the formatting has been applied, or place the cursor in the hyperlink, right-click, and select Remove Hyperlink from the context menu.
Tip
To change the color of hyperlinks, go to Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Application colors, scroll to Unvisited links and/or Visited links, pick the new colors and click OK. Caution: this will change the color for all hyperlinks in all components of LibreOffice; this may not be what you want.
In Writer and Calc (but not Draw or Impress), you can also change the Internet link character style or define and apply new styles to selected links.
You can insert hyperlinks using the Navigator and this is an easy way to insert a hyperlink to another part of the same document.
1)Open the documents containing the items you want to cross-reference.
2)Click on the Navigator icon in the Sidebar or press F5.
4)Select the document from the drop-down list at the bottom of the Navigator that contains the item that you want to link to.
5)In the Navigator list, select the item that you want to insert as a hyperlink.
6)Drag the item to where you want to insert the hyperlink in the document. The name of the item is inserted in the document as an active hyperlink.
When using the Navigator to insert a hyperlink to an object such as a graphic, it is recommended to have the hyperlink show a useful name, for example 2009 Sales Graph. You need to give such objects useful names instead of leaving them as the default names, for example Graphics6, or you will have to edit the name of the resulting link using the Hyperlink dialog, as described below.
You can also use the Navigator to insert a hyperlink from one document (the source) to a specific place in another document (the target). Open the Navigator in the target document and drag the item to the position in the source document where you want the hyperlink to appear.
You can use the Hyperlink dialog to insert a hyperlink and modify all hyperlinks.
1)Highlight the existing text you want to use as a link.
2)Click the Hyperlink icon on the Standard toolbar or go to Insert > Hyperlink on the menu bar to open the Hyperlink dialog (Figure 2).
3)On the left side, select one of the four categories of hyperlink:
–Internet: the hyperlink points to a web address, normally starting with http://.
–Mail: the hyperlink opens an email message that is pre-addressed to a particular recipient.
–Document: the hyperlink points to another document or to another place in the current document.
–New document: the hyperlink creates a new document.
4)The Hyperlink dialog changes depending on the type of hyperlink selected. Enter all necessary details to create the hyperlink.
5)Click Apply to create the hyperlink and the Hyperlink dialog remains open allowing you to create another hyperlink.
6)Click Close to close the Hyperlink dialog.
The dialog changes according to the choice made for the hyperlink category in the left panel. A full description of all the choices and their interactions is beyond the scope of this chapter. Here is a summary of the most common choices.
•For an Internet hyperlink, choose the type of hyperlink (Web or FTP), and enter the required web address (URL).
•For a Mail hyperlink, specify the address of the receiver and the subject.
•For a Document hyperlink, specify the document path (clicking Open File opens a file browser) or leave this blank if you want to link to a target in the same document. Optionally specify the target in the document (for example a specific slide). Click the Target in Document icon to open the Target in Document dialog where you can select the type of target; or, if you know the name of the target, you can type it into the box.
•For a New Document hyperlink, specify whether to edit the newly created document immediately (Edit now) or just create it (Edit later). Enter the file name and select the type of document to create (text, spreadsheet, and so on). Click the Select Path icon to open a file browser and choose where to store the file.
The Further settings section in the bottom right part of the dialog is common to all the hyperlink categories, although some choices are more relevant to some types of links.
•Frame value determines how the hyperlink will open. This applies to documents that open in a Web browser.
•Form specifies if the link is to be presented as text or as a button. See the Writer Guide Chapter 15 Using Forms in Writer for more information.
•Text specifies the text that will be visible to the user. If you do not enter anything here, LibreOffice uses the full URL or path as the link text. Note that if the link is relative and you move the file, this text will not change, though the target will.
•Name is applicable to HTML documents. It specifies text that will be added as a NAME attribute in the HTML code behind the hyperlink.
•Events: click this icon to open the Assign Macro dialog and select a macro to run when the link is clicked. See Chapter 13 Getting Started with Macros for more information.
To edit an existing link:
1)Click anywhere in the hyperlink text.
2)Click the Hyperlink icon on the Standard toolbar, or go to Edit > Hyperlink on the menu bar, or right-click and select Edit Hyperlink from the context menu. The Hyperlink dialog opens.
3)Make your changes and click Apply to save your changes. The Hyperlink dialog remains open, allowing you to continue editing hyperlinks. Click Apply after editing each hyperlink.
4)When you are finished editing hyperlinks, click Close.
The standard (default) behavior for activating hyperlinks within LibreOffice is to use Ctrl+click. This behavior can be changed in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Security > Options by deselecting the option Ctrl-click required to follow hyperlinks. If clicking in your links activates them, check that page to see if the option has been deselected.
You can remove the link from hyperlink text and leave just the text by right-clicking on the link and selecting Remove Hyperlink from the context menu. You may then need to re-apply some formatting to match the text with the rest of your document.
To erase the link text or button from the document completely, select it and press the Backspace or Delete key.
You can use the Web Wizard to create several types of standard web pages from all LibreOffice components except Math. Each time you start the Web Wizard in a LibreOffice component, Writer automatically starts before the Web Wizard opens. The Web Wizard is linked to Writer and is normally used in Writer for creating web pages.
1)Go to File > Wizards > Web Page on the menu bar to open the Web Wizard dialog.
2)On the first page of the Wizard, choose settings and click Next >. If this is your first web page, the only choice is <default>.
3)Select or browse to the document you would like to format. The information for Title, Summary and Author is taken from the document properties. If necessary, edit this information (Figure 4).
4)Click Next > and select a layout for the web site by clicking on the layout boxes (Figure 5).
5)Click Next > to customize the layout and select the information to be listed and screen resolution (Figure 6).
6)Click Next > and select a style for the page. Use the drop-down list to choose different styles and color combinations. Browse to select a background image and icon set from the Gallery (Figure 7).
7)Click Next > and enter general information for the web site, such as Title and HTML Metadata information (Figure 8).
8)Click Next > and enter the information of where to publish your new web site (Figure 9).
9)Click Finish to save the file and close the Web Wizard.