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I am editing odt document in LibreOffice Writer. I have the following, very simple layout, it looks like this:

enter image description here

I would like to text in each column to stay separate from the other column.

So the same piece of text should look like this:

enter image description here

Now as you see in the picture above I simply used line breaks to create layout, but I don't want to do this because there's going to be text in second longer columns as well, so the whole layout is going to break each time I add something to one or other column.

Is there a way I can create desired layout in LibreOffice?

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  • WHy not just use a table with two columns and without visible borders?
    – Johannes H.
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:07
  • Ah you're right! I forgot about easiest option.
    – Pawelmhm
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:09
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    @JohannesH Because tables are for displaying tabular data. Don't use tables for styling content. Web Developers will certainly agree...
    – That Brazilian Guy
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:14
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    Web developer myself - so yes, I'D agree with you, semantics are a point here. But after all we're talking about a document, which is most likely printed at the end - not machine read or processed. WHich is why I woudln't care too much about semantics here. (ANd, after all, if semantics are important, I wouldn't use any WYSIWYG in the first place, but using LaTeX or similar...)
    – Johannes H.
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:17
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    Actually, Adobe Reader (assuming the document is converted to PDF when published) does a pretty bad job on multi column layouts when copying, most likely contets from both columns get mixed - while it can handle tables (sure, if inserted in another editor that understands the raw data inserted into the clipboard, it might reappear as a table). ANd if the primary purpose was machine-processing, odt wouldn't be the appropriate choice, in that case we're dealing with a XY-problem here. But there is no need to argue: If I knew another way, I'd immediately recommend that one. I just don't.
    – Johannes H.
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:35

2 Answers 2

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Don't use tables for non-tabular data.

There are better options

1. Use paragraph spacing and identation

enter image description here

To achieve this, select all the desired paragraphs and then right-click on "paragraph", the following dialog appears:

enter image description here

Or, as a much quicker shortcut, click on the ruler rightmost area and drag it to the left:

enter image description here

2. Use textboxes:

  • Activate the "drawing" tab (View -> toolbars -> drawing)
  • Click on the "text" icon
  • Drag to draw the area where you want your text to be
  • set the anchor propertiy to "as character" for it to stop flowing over the normal text
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  • Thanks for answer, the thing is I need two columns adjacent to each other, and I'd like to add text to each of them, will I be able to do that with indentation?
    – Pawelmhm
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:25
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    No. If you need multiple areas of independent text, you could use text boxes.
    – That Brazilian Guy
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:31
  • Can I use text boxes in libreoffice?
    – Pawelmhm
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:32
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    They're found under "drawing". If that's semantically any better than the table depends on the content though - so if you care about it, you might want to elaborate.
    – Johannes H.
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:37
  • If you do decide to use textboxes, remember you have to set their anchor propertiy to "as character" for it to stop flowing over the normal text.
    – That Brazilian Guy
    Feb 3, 2014 at 20:38
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Select the text to put in 2 columns, Insert -> Section -> "Columns" Tab. Then simply select the amount of columns

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