[Solved] Insert many tabs in multi-column document

[lockhands25]

I have used Open Office over many years mainly for Text and Spreadsheet Documents quite successfully, but just recently come up with a requirement which I have not experienced previously, and now wonder if someone on your staff might be able to help me with it.

I am attaching 2 .pdf documents which I hope will help to see the problem I have experienced.

In essence I have a Master list of Musical Tune List Names with a playing Key and a Page Number.
My attempt to make this into a new document of two columns, with a smaller size of Type Font and the “Playing Key” and “Page Number” each centred under their own heading. My first attempts are seen in the second of the 2 .pdf documents.
Using the tried old “Tab Stops” method, I soon realised that not having even completed the first page, this method was going to take me years to complete all the entries.

Looking at the original list, I noticed that the fist of Tab Stops could be made begin with the “_” (underscore character) being used to set the first Stop to alien under the “Key” heading and the first “.”(Full Point) to appear under the “Page” heading using a formula or command (that I am not aware of), but you maybe.

Any help with this, would be most appreciated.

Edited subject title for clarification, floris v

[floris v]

You need to use Find and Replace with regular expressions turned on. First, replace the underscore _ with a tab character, entered as \t, then replace \.\. with \t. You can find the Regular expressions setting when you click Other options in the Find and Replace dialog box.

Edit: Modified the search pattern - I forgot that . is a wildcard

.

[lockhands25]

Thanks for that advice. I'll let you know how I get on when I get to try it in earnest.

[floris v]

To be absolutely safe, do it in a copy of your document.

[robleyd]

If the source file for this process is not a PDF file, you might be able to use Text to Table t0 convert your text to a three column table, which you could then place in columns.

Can you upload a sample of the source document - two or three pages should suffice.

[lockhands25]

Dear Floris and Robleyd,
Thank you both for your help. I have attached a .pdf of my latest attempt using the "Floris" method and in the end, although not perfect because of the variation in the original text, is good enough for me. Now I would respectfully ask "how do I set up all the listed text on all the columns to have the same Tab Points?".
I have tried selecting all the text in each column and then tried to set the Tab Points but this cannot be done as the tab do not appear when this is tried and the only I found to do this was to add them piecemeal. I have decided to try putting the Headings in 2 separate columns at the head of each Page, but wondered if that might upset the associated Tab Points?
Also as requested by Robleyd, I have included the original OO 4.1.15 text file for all the pages. I'm sorry but I have not tried you suggestion yet, but would perhaps have a go if you can explain how to divide this text into the total of 6 columns required.
Any ideas?
Thanks and Cheers,

[robleyd]

You seem to have designed this as though you were using a manual typewriter instead of taking advantage of Writer's features as a word processor.

Is the following something along the lines you are trying to achieve?

jazz_titles.png (33.24 KiB) Viewed 1152 times

[lockhands25]

Dear robleyd,

No, I did not type the content, but imported it from an existing text document, see the attached Jazz Chords Index Master document.

Thanks again for your interest.

[JeJe]

Having replaced the _ and .. (and any variations) with tabs

If you go to the Styles and formatting (F11) and right click the default paragraph style
Go to the tabs tab and enter 6.5 in the position textbox and click new
Enter 8 and in the position textbox and set the type to "Right" and click new
And click okay

Those look approximately right.

If you create or use a different paragraph style for your "tune name" headings then you can give those different tabs in the same way

[robleyd]

No, I did not type the content, but imported it from an existing text document

That wasn't my question - I was asking if the layout I showed was more or less what you were trying to achieve. I added borders to the table cells to visually separate them. The image shows a document laid out using a six column table and for this example I simply copied a few entries from your document by way of demonstrating the proposed layout.

There is a significant disadvantage (well several really) of proceeding with your method of aligning with tabs. Consider, what happens if you should need to insert a new song title.

[lockhands25]

Dear robleyd,
Thanks for your response. I am sorry but I missed your question regarding the layout. As you can see from the .pdf document which I provided, your version and my own have a similar layout, so "yes" yours is an acceptable alternative.
Your point about adding additional Titles might cause problems although in this case, I am not expecting the need to do this as this list is already complete, but I would be most interested to know of any other possible "significant disadvantage" could be experienced by using the Tab Method.
If you would be kind enough, I would ask if you would give me details of how I could automatically import the Text Document content which I have provided, into a new Document of your layout and split into the 6 defined Columns as shown?

[robleyd]

how I could automatically import the Text Document content which I have provided, into a new Document

.

There's no simple to do that the way your document is constructed.

I suspect what we have here is an XY Problem.

If I understand correctly, you have an existing document, several hundred pages of music? which you are trying to index by title and place into and you want the resulting index in a newspaper columns style with left and right main columns. Am I correct so far?

[lockhands25]

Dear robleyd,

Basically, yes, you are correct so far, with the exception of "several hundred Pages of Music". These are actually Chords, some of which appear as up to 6 Tunes per Page in the main volume. At present there is no need to include links to the items listed, just to give the "Tune Name", "Playing Key" and "Page Number" and an alphabetical list of tunes.
Later I intend to split up each set of chords (into separate files - for ease of use) and provide a link to each Tune separately after the Index has been completed.
As the original Index was designed as just 2 columns, I decided to separate out the "Playing Key" and "Page Number" from "The Tune Name" to make it easier to read and that is where I am at to date.
I hope this clarifies your question.
Thanks for your interest.

[robleyd]

with the exception of "several hundred Pages of Music". These are actually Chords,

Silly me; I thought the umbrella term "music?" might have covered chords but I apologise for my error.

Getting to my point; as you may know, Writer is perfectly capable of constructing an alphabetic index from an existing document. I suspect that with some preparatory work it would be possible to convince Writer to format the index as you require, with the added bonus that future additions to the document would be simple to reflect in the index. Indexing this way automatically inserts the relevant page number for the indexed text which is presumably as mentioned below.

However, to do this would require a document with presumable a tune title including the key (is that how it is set up?) followed by relevant chord information for that tune, for each tune. The titles would need to be marked as index entries.

If you think this might be a road you would go down, I'll spend more time seeing how easily it can be set up. Otherwise, try JeJe's suggestion for tab setting.

[lockhands25]

Dear robleyd,
There was no need to apologise for your error, I did not make it clear that the use was for Chords and not music as it seemed irrelevant at the time.
None-the-less, I do appreciate your interest in this matter, thanks!

[lockhands25]

Attempt to get all Tabs the same for all Pages.odt

(39.3 KiB) Downloaded 7 times

Dear JeJe,
I have attached a copy of my latest attempt following your suggestions, but alas this has only partially worked as you can see. In order to try and avoid any possible influence from the headings, I have put them in a separate Table split into 2 Columns, but for some reason the Tab Settings seem to have become corrupted from Page 2 onward. There are some manual corrections which I will still after the Tabs have been sorted out, but I am aware of that.
Any help is much appreciated

[JeJe]

You've got direct formatting on the first page which means however you change the style it will remain different.

I've got rid of the direct formatting (selecting it and applying the style) so everything is the same and changed the second tab to 9cm.

Some tidying up is still needed.

[lockhands25]

Dear JeJe,

That'll do, Thanks a mill.
Regards.