Letter wizard LibreOffice

The wizard helps you create a letter template. Whether its Personal, Formal Personal, and Business, the template you create can be applied to future letters of that type.

The steps the wizard takes you through are as follows:

Page design
Letterhead layout
Printed items
Recipient and sender
Footer
Name and location

To move through the steps either click the Next and Back buttons at the bottom of the dialog. You also can click on the steps listed in the left column.

Page design

The first step allows you to choose one of three types of letters: Business, Formal personal, or Personal.

After choosing one of these pick the design style from a drop-down menu. If you choose Business or Formal personal, the choices are:

Elegant
Modern
Office

The Business letter has a check box in case you are going to write letters on paper with your company’s letterhead.

If you choose Personal, the choices are:

Bottle
Mail
Marine
Red line

Letterhead layout

The second step is only active when you choose Business letter in step one and put a check in the letterhead checkbox under it.

It has three sections: Logo, return address, and footer. These are common items found on a pre-printed business letter.

The first task is to choose which elements are on your paper. Then use the associated text boxes to set the height of each one and their space from the left and top margins.

Logo

There are four text boxes that you can type in the desired number or use the up and down arrow buttons. One click of either one adjusts the number by 1 inch. The text boxes are as follows:

Height
Width
Spacing to left margin
Spacing to top margin

Type in the desired number in the text boxes. you can enter up to two places after the decimal point. You also can click the up and down arrow buttons to adjust the number. Each click adjusts the number by 1.

Click on the dialog and hold down the mouse button. Then drag the dialog to the side you can see the template and the Logo element. As you adjust the text boxes to match the logo on your letterhead, you can watch it adjust.

Return address

There are four text boxes that you can type in the desired number or use the up and down arrow buttons. One click of either one adjusts the number by 1 inch. The text boxes are as follows:

Height
Width
Spacing to left margin
Spacing to top margin

Click on the dialog and hold down the mouse button. Then drag the dialog to the side you can see the template and the Return address element. As you adjust the text boxes to match the logo on your letterhead, you can watch it adjust.

Include footer

Putting a check in in the Include footer check box to make the Height text box active. Type the desired height in the text box. You can enter up to two places after the decimal point. The up and down arrow buttons will adjust the height by 1 per click. The text box allows for negative numbers.

Printed items

The third step has several check boxes for standard parts of letters.

Logo: If you clicked the Logo checkbox in Step 2, Letterhead layout, this checkbox will be greyed out. Otherwise the checkbox will be active. A check in it will include a default logo image appear in the template. Removing it means that it will not appear in the template.
Return address in envelope window: This will include an address in the template that, if you fold the letter properly, can be seen in the window of an envelope.
Letter Signs: This includes a line with references to a business letter on the letter template.
Subject line: This includes a line in the template. Letters that are based on this template will include this line, where you can write the subject of the letter.
Salutation: This is the greeting line that will be included in the template. The associated drop-down menu is also a text box that allows you to type a salutation. It also allows you to establish one of the following salutations:
- To Whom It May Concern
- Dear Sir or Madam
- Hello
Fold marks: These are small lines that are halfway down the page at the left and right edges. They are there so you can fold the letter properly. This checkbox is active for the Business letter and Formal personal letter options in the first step.
Complimentary close: This is like the Salutation. It puts a closing statement in the template. The associated text box and drop-down menu allows you to type a closing or use one of the following in the menu:
- Sincerely
- Best regards
- Cheers
Footer: Putting a check in this checkbox creates a footer section at the bottom of the template. The Personal letter setting in step 1 does not include a footer. The footer can be set in step 5.

Recipient and sender

Step 4 is active only when Business letter is selected in step one. If you also select the “Use letterhead paper with pre-printed elements” checkbox, then in step two, place a check in the Return address checkbox. This makes the first section of the Recipient and sender step inactive.

This section, Recipient’s address, has two choices. You can choose one of them.

Use placeholders for recipient’s address: Specifies that placeholder fields are inserted into the letter template.
Use address database for mail merge: Address database fields are inserted into the letter template.

If in step 2, you leave the Return address checkbox empty, the first section in this step, “Specify the sender and recipient information,” becomes active. The section has two radio buttons from which to choose:

Use user data for return address: This tells LibreOffice to use the address that is stored in the User data section of the Options dialog. The Options dialog can be accessed from the Tools menu in StartCenter or anyone of the six applications.
New sender address: Selecting this radio button allows you to create a template with a different address than what is stored in Options.

Footer

This step is active when Business letter or Formal personal letter is selected in step 1. If you have selected Business letter and put a check in the “Use letterhead paper with pre-printed elements” checkbox, make sure to leave the Footer checkbox empty in step 2. If there is a check in it, the Footer step will be inactive.

The Footer step has a text box and two checkboxes. Type what you want in the text box and watch as it appears in the template preview behind the dialog. You can edit the font later, if you do not like the style.

The two checkboxes are as follows:

Include only on second and following pages: Perhaps your first page is a cover page. Maybe information in the footer does not pertain to what is on page 1. A check in this box will leave the footer off of the first page, but it will appear on the rest of them.
Include page number: This will put the page number on each page, most likely in the bottom, center of the page. This can be changed by editing the template.

Name and location

In this step, you choose the directory where you want the template to be saved, and you give the template a name. It also gives you the choice whether you want to create a letter immediately from the template or if you want to edit the template manually before creating a letter from it.

First type a name for the document in the text box for Template name.
The next step is to go to the directory where you want to save the document. To do this, click the button with three dots. This opens a Save or Save As dialog. Go to or create the folder where you want to save the template. The Save as type drop-down menu only has ODF Text Document Template.
Step three is to choose whether you want to create a letter from the template immediately or manually edit the template. Click the desired radio button.

When you have satisfactorily gone through all six steps, click the Finish button at the bottom of the dialog.