Linux Tips: Inserting One Landscape Page in a LibreOffice Document

Most business documents are in portrait format, but sometimes there is a need to insert one or two pages in landscape format.

The information in this post applies to both LibreOffice and Open Office; for clarity, I’ll refer only to LibreOffice below.

Office Extensions

Additional functionality can be incorporated into LibreOffice by installing extensions, and there are a large number of extensions available for both LibreOffice and Open Office.

Here we’ll walk through installing the Alba extension.

Step By Step

1. Download the Alba extension from the Alba project page. This will be saved as a file called Alba.oxt.
2. In LibreOffice, click on the Tools menu and select Extension Manager…
3. In the Extension Manager, click on Add…
4. Browse to the previously downloaded Alba.oxt and click on Open
5. The extension will be listed in the Extension Manager; click on Close
6. Create a new LibreOffice document, and on the Insert menu you’ll see a Landscape/Portrait… item:

This will display the Alba dialog box:

Summary

It’s arguable that this kind of functionality should be built-in to LibreOffice and Open Office. Although it’s possible to insert one landscape page in a portrait document without this extension, the extension makes it much easier.

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