Capstone — Rebuilding the Word & PowerPoint Capstone in LibreOffice

Word & PowerPoint Chapter 12 built a styled, mail-merged business report and its companion presentation deck. This capstone rebuilds the exact same project, entirely in Writer, Calc, and Impress — and at every step, names explicitly whether that piece transferred directly, needed a genuinely different approach, or leans on general suite knowledge this course didn't cover in its own dedicated chapter.

The Project Brief

The same brief as before: a professionally structured report, reviewed by a colleague, personalized to several named recipients, and summarized into a short, disciplined slide deck for a live meeting — this time built start to finish without Word or PowerPoint at all.

Step 1 — Structuring the Report with Writer's Styles

Every section title uses a real paragraph style — Heading 1 for major sections, applied via the Styles panel (F11) — never manually bolded text. The Navigator (F5) confirms the structure is genuinely present, not just visually convincing. (Chapter 2 — transfers directly, different panel.)

Step 2 — Page Layout with Page Styles Instead of Section Breaks

This is the one genuinely different mechanism in the whole rebuild. The cover page uses the built-in "First Page" style; a wide data table gets its own isolated page using the "Landscape" style, entered and exited with two separate page breaks (Insert → More Breaks → Insert Page Break) rather than Word's own paired section breaks. Because a Page Style already owns its own header definition, there's no separate "Link to Previous" step needed at all — switching Page Styles handles both the orientation change and the header difference in one unified mechanism. (Chapter 3 — the standout structural difference in this entire course.)

Step 3 — Table of Contents, Captions & Cross-References

Writer's own Insert → Table of Contents and Index and Insert → Caption commands solve the identical job Word & PowerPoint Chapter 4 covered — a live ToC built from Heading styles, auto-numbered figures and tables. This course didn't dedicate its own chapter to this specific topic, but the underlying commands work on the same principle: real structure in, a live, updatable reference out. (General suite knowledge, not a dedicated chapter here.)

Step 4 — Collaborative Review with Track Changes and Comments

Edit → Track Changes → Record Changes, plus Insert → Comment, give a colleague the same reviewing tools Word & PowerPoint Chapter 6 covered — tracked insertions/deletions and margin discussion, reviewed individually rather than blindly accepted. Also not its own dedicated chapter in this course, but functioning essentially identically to Word's own tools. (General suite knowledge, not a dedicated chapter here.)

Step 5 — Personalizing via the Mail Merge Wizard

A cover letter is personalized using Tools → Mail Merge Wizard, connected to a registered Calc spreadsheet as its data source, with field names matched explicitly against the spreadsheet's own column headers before the full merge runs. (Chapter 4 — same job, a materially different guided-wizard flow.)

Step 6 — Building the Companion Deck with the Master Slide

The Impress deck's Master Slide is set to match the Writer report's own accent colour, the same shared-design idea Chapter 1 introduced at the very start of this course. Every slide uses one of a small set of Layouts. (Chapter 7 — same underlying idea, a somewhat differently organized Master/Layout relationship.)

Step 7 — Distilling the Report into Slides

The deck does not copy the report's own paragraphs. Each slide covers exactly one takeaway, kept within the 6×6 guideline; the report's own dense data table becomes a single chart. This step is pure design judgment from Word & PowerPoint Chapter 9 — it applies completely unchanged, since it was never actually about which application you're using in the first place. (Transfers with zero change — a judgment principle, not a tool-specific feature.)

Step 8 — Purposeful Motion in Impress

Impress's own Animation and Transition panels offer the same underlying categories Word & PowerPoint Chapter 10 covered for PowerPoint — one consistent transition style across the deck, and a single On Click entrance animation for the one slide that genuinely benefits from a progressive reveal. Not its own dedicated chapter in this course, but the same restraint judgment applies regardless of which application implements it. (General suite knowledge, not a dedicated chapter here — same design judgment as Step 7.)

Step 9 — Rehearsing and Presenting

Every slide's extra explanatory detail lives in its own Notes, not on the visible slide. The Presenter Console keeps that detail private during the live meeting; Rehearse Timings confirms realistic pacing beforehand. Afterward, the deck is exported confidently as PDF handouts — and, per Chapter 9's own honest caveat, video export is verified against the actual installed Impress version before being relied on for stakeholders who couldn't attend. (Chapter 8, plus Chapter 9's own interoperability caveat.)

Putting It All Together

Hands-On Exercises