In two columns layout, how to keep text in each column separate from the other?

Question

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

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:

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?

Solution

Don't use tables for non-tabular data.

There are better options

1. Use paragraph spacing and identation

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

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

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

Comments

[Johannes H.]

WHy not just use a table with two columns and without visible borders?

[Pawelmhm]

Ah you're right! I forgot about easiest option.

[That Brazilian Guy]

@JohannesH Because tables are for displaying tabular data. Don't use tables for styling content. Web Developers will certainly agree...

[Johannes H.]

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...)

[That Brazilian Guy]

@JohannesH. I see your point! But what if this file is to be embedded, converted, copy-pasted, etc etc? A simple paragraph formatting will have more chances of being interpreted than a table.

[Johannes H.]

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.

[Pawelmhm]

@Johannes I do need final document in pdf so I think that tables may be best option.

[Johannes H.]

Textboxes might work, too... depends on the tool you use for conversion. Not sure what the LibreOffice internal converter does to the textboxes. In the end, a PDF doesn'T carry ANY semantic data (just visual), so it realy doesn't care from that point of view.

[Pawelmhm]

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?

[That Brazilian Guy]

No. If you need multiple areas of independent text, you could use text boxes.

[Pawelmhm]

Can I use text boxes in libreoffice?

[Johannes H.]

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.

[That Brazilian Guy]

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.