While Writer allows you to create an advanced book template that consists of a master document and a number of subdocuments, there are situations where using a simpler, one-file template makes more sense. The main advantage of a one-file book template is that it helps you to work around two major problems in Writer.

OpenOffice.org is a fantastic office suite, finally undermining Microsoft’s monopoly on Office-like software (word processing, presentations, etc.). Out of all of the OpenOffice.org programs, Writer is by far the most used: writing a document, a letter, or anything else is definitely more common than writing a presentation. This book is all about OpenOffice.org’s Writer.

The book’s cover

When you download mail merge template or create your own, you lose a feature that’s built into the OpenOffice.org mail merges and reports: printing more than one record on a sheet of paper. However, it’s easy to add that ability yourself.