Writing and editing — Nixt Writer docs

This page covers the everyday work of writing: typing, moving the caret, selecting, splitting and joining paragraphs, breaks, the clipboard, undo, the word count and the Navigator.

How the page works

Writer shows your document as one continuous sheet of paper, the width of your page setup, with the margins around the text. Each paragraph is edited in place, and each table cell holds its own paragraphs.

Page breaks show as a labelled rule, and the page count in the status bar is an estimate. To see exactly where pages end, export a PDF — see Printing and exporting.

Typing and moving the caret

Click anywhere in a paragraph to put the caret there, and type.
Click in the empty space below the last paragraph to put the caret at the end of the document.
Use the arrow keys to move through the text. At the start of a paragraph, ↑ moves to the end of the paragraph above. At the end of a paragraph, ↓ moves to the start of the paragraph below. Inside a table cell, the arrows stay inside that cell.

When you choose a format such as Bold with no text selected, Writer applies it to what you type next at the caret.

Selecting text

Drag across text, or hold Shift and use the arrow keys, to select it. Double-click a word to select it.

Paragraph formatting — alignment, spacing, lists and styles — applies to the paragraph that holds the caret.

New paragraphs and line breaks

To	Do this
Start a new paragraph	Press `Return`.
Start a new line in the same paragraph	Press `Shift+Return`, or click Insert › Breaks › Insert a line break.

A new paragraph takes the style that the current style says should follow it. For example, pressing Return at the end of a heading gives you a Normal paragraph rather than another heading. A paragraph in a list gives you another item in the same list.

Joining paragraphs

To	Do this
Join a paragraph to the one above	Put the caret at the very start of the paragraph and press `Delete` on a Mac (`Backspace` on Windows and Linux).
Pull the next paragraph up into this one	Put the caret at the very end of the paragraph and press forward delete (`fn+Delete` on a Mac, `Delete` on Windows and Linux).

Inside a table cell, joining only works between paragraphs of that cell. At the top of a cell, Delete does nothing.

With track changes on, joining two paragraphs is recorded as a deleted paragraph mark instead of joining them straight away. A reviewer who accepts it joins the paragraphs. See Comments, track changes and compare.

The Tab key

What Tab does depends on where the caret is:

Where the caret is	`Tab`	`Shift+Tab`
An ordinary paragraph	Indents the paragraph by 0.5 inch.	Moves the paragraph 0.5 inch back out.
A list item	Moves the item one level deeper, down to the ninth level.	Moves the item one level up.
A table cell	Moves to the next cell and selects its text.	Moves to the previous cell.

Tab characters already in a document from Word are kept.

Copy, cut and paste

Writer copies and pastes plain text.

To	Do this
Copy the selection	Home › Clipboard › Copy, or press `⌘C` (`Ctrl+C` on Windows and Linux). The status bar says Copied.
Cut the selection	Press `⌘X` (`Ctrl+X` on Windows and Linux).
Paste at the caret	Home › Clipboard › Paste, or press `⌘V` (`Ctrl+V` on Windows and Linux).

When you paste several lines with Paste on the ribbon, each line becomes its own paragraph, with the formatting of the paragraph you pasted into.

Right-click in the text for your system’s cut, copy, paste and select-all commands. When the caret is in a link, the menu also offers Open followed by the link’s address, or Go to followed by a bookmark’s name. Select all selects the text of the paragraph at the caret.

Page breaks

A page break makes the next paragraph start on a new page when you print or export.

Put the caret in the paragraph that should end the page.
Click Insert › Breaks › Insert a page break.

The break goes after that paragraph and shows on the page as a Page break rule.

To remove a page break, click the × at the right of the rule (Remove the page break).

Undo and redo

To	Do this
Undo	Click Undo at the right of the ribbon’s tab row, or press `⌘Z` (`Ctrl+Z` on Windows and Linux).
Redo	Click Redo, or press `⇧⌘Z` or `⌘Y` (`Ctrl+Shift+Z` or `Ctrl+Y` on Windows and Linux).

The tooltips name the step: Undo Typing, Redo Bold, Undo Insert table. When there is nothing to undo, the tooltip says Nothing to undo.

Writer remembers the last 200 steps.
A run of typing in one paragraph is one step. Moving the caret to another paragraph starts a new step.
A paste or a deletion is a step of its own.
Larger commands are one step each, so one undo takes back the whole thing — for example Merge in mail merge, comparing documents, accepting all changes, or opening an earlier version.
If you undo and then make a new change, the steps you undid can no longer be redone.

Word count

The status bar shows the number of words at all times. The Proofing group on the Review tab shows it too.

To see the full count:

Click the word count in the status bar, the word count button on the Review tab, or More › Word count….

The Word count dialog shows:

Line	What it counts
Words	Words in the whole document, including tables.
Characters, with spaces	Characters, not counting paragraph marks.
Characters, no spaces	Characters without spaces, tabs or line breaks.
Paragraphs	Paragraphs that have text in them, not counting paragraphs inside tables.
Pages, about	An estimate from the amount of text.
Comments	Appears when the document has comments.
Tracked changes	Appears when the document has tracked changes.
Selection	Appears when text is selected: its Words and Characters, with spaces.

Deleted text that is still showing as a tracked change is not counted, because the document counts as it will read once the changes are accepted. For the real page count, export a PDF.

Click Close to close the dialog.

The Navigator

The Navigator lists the document’s headings as an outline, so you can jump to any section.

Click View › Show › Navigator, or More › Navigator.
Click a heading to put the caret at the start of it.

The heading that holds the caret is highlighted. Deeper heading levels are indented.

A paragraph appears in the Navigator when its style is a heading style, such as Heading 1 to Heading 6. If there are none, the pane says “Headings appear here. Give a paragraph the Heading 1 style and it becomes part of the outline — and a bookmark in the exported PDF.” See Paragraphs and styles.

When you can’t type

If typing does nothing, one of these is the reason:

What you see	Why	What to do
A banner above the page describing a restriction	The document is restricted to read-only or comments only.	See Restricting editing.
A banner saying Record n of total	You are previewing a mail merge, which can’t be edited.	Click Back to the letter. See Mail merge.

A lock icon beside the document’s name means the file can’t be written to on disk. You can still type; save your work with Save a copy as.