Hey folks so finishing up my digital ashcan and I have decided not to tackle anything like indesign or scribus yet so I had a couple questions on the best way to go about a couple things for the layout with open office.

Cover: I am not sure how to best go about creating a front and back cover for the book. I am thinking I could insert the image into the file on the first "page" and then stretch it to the edge of the page and anchor it there, but would this be the best way to go about making the cover.

Footer/Page Number: I want to put a fancy image in my footer, and page numbers on the pages but I don't want them make it appear in every page (like the cover) if this is possible. I would also like if the page numbers could start counting from a specific page instead of just from the beginning of the document that way the “first page” can be from the intro not cover.

Sorry for being a total newb I poked around a bit but with the limited time I have to get the product in a rough draft for “Jakes Awesome Contest” I figured I would just see if any one happened to know off the top of their heads.

Quick and dirty :

First of all, don't stretch your image. Right-click it and enter the images properties, then resize it to your pages' dimensions. Try doing it keeping the ratio, if possible.

You can format the page numbers selecting one of them, right-clicking, selecting "field" and setting the initial value to -1, -6 or minus whatever you like. The page numbers aren't displayed before page 1.