this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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For me it was under Format - Page Style, burried in some long dropdown menu. It is absolutly not user friendly, if you are new to the software or don't use it very often.
I needed one minute to find it and I kind of knew what I was searching for (a window with all the settings for the page). The UI should be made in a way where the slowest user (apparently me) will find such essential functions fast, like in every other writing software (MS Office, OnlyOffice, Google shit, ...).
So for me the UI of LibreOffice is a bad one.
To be fair, you seem to be using the original UI that mirrored Word 2003's UI (which, when I first switched over to Linux back in 2012, I was positively thrilled about Writer having as it was basically a drop-in replacement for Word, then).
I dunno if I just occasionally used Word too many times since then but I find the old UI impenetrable now, as well; but LibreOffice has support for the Ribbon UI (and 2โ3 similar ones, I think), as well. Maybe you might find it easier?
I almost never switch the orientation of Writer so I genuinely was pretty much finding how to do it for the first time.
Maybe that's a point that Dan Williams can address: The default presets are important. With your UI I would have found it much faster, because it is where I would expect it to be.
Tantacrul/Martin Keary has some nice videos about how he redesigned Audacity and Muse Score. The point about how important sane presets are comes up quite often.
When you install LibreOffice now, the set-up guide encourages you gently to use the newer, friendlier tabbed interface. I don't know if the same is true for in-place updates.