Using a List Box's user-choice as a Condition in LibreOffice Writer

Question

I'm trying to make a form-fillable pdf where List Boxes will affect other parts of the sheet.

I have several Hidden Paragraphs in my document (hiding graphics, etc), and a List Box. I'd like to use the List Box choice as the Condition to dynamically hide and unhide the various Hidden Paragraphs.

Example: The user selects clicks on the List Box, and Cat, Dog, and Bird are listed. If the user selects "Dog" from the list, the paragraph with text and pictures of dogs is no longer hidden.

I get that I have to do Hide Paragraph if [List Box choice] != "Dog" as my Condition, I just can't figure out where to get the List Box choice. Feels like I hit a wall in searching for an answer or guide because I'm missing specific terminology (field? formula?).

Answer 1

I am actually trying to do the same thing, and I'm getting very frustrated by it. I developed a case management database for my law office (actually, it pretty much manages almost every aspect of the office at this point), but because we handle all kinds of different cases (criminal defense, civil litigation, probate, etc.) the information we need to track often varies. For instance, on criminal cases, we need to keep track of the sentencing guidelines scoring, the current offer from the prosecutor, prior convictions, and so on. For family law cases, we need to keep track of things like assets, parenting time schedules, etc. Putting all of these variable on one page at the same time gets very cumbersome very quickly, so I'm trying to set the form up so that when you select a case a "criminal defense", it shows the "Criminal Defense" portion of the page, and hides the "Family Law", "Civil Litigation", "Probate", and other portions.

The only way I could come up to do it was the create a variable (in this case, I called it "CaseType") and set the paragraphs to hide or be visible depending on what the variable is set to. This works great, except (a) it's awkward making users select the type of case it is for database purposes, and then making them select the type of case details to display in the form; and (more importantly) (b) the user has to type the required value of the variable into the dialog directly, which is a pain. I would much rather be able to have the type of sections that are displayed determined by the value of the case type in the database, or at the very list have the panels displayed in a dropdown list.

I came up with an idea to record a macro that would run when you pushed buttons--for example, press the "Criminal Case Panel" button and a script would run that selected the variable via double-click, entered the correct value in the dialog box, and then applied the new variable, but it seems that Writer will not let you record macros that change values in dialog boxes.

There is so much untapped potential in this aspect of the software; if the user variables could be set by forms--or if the "hidden" flags could be triggered to be hidden by the values of database variables--it would open up so many possibilities. Makes me wish I had the coding skills to work on this part of the software.

Answer 2

According to https://help.libreoffice.org/7.0/en-US/text/swriter/01/04090200.html, you can set up a database for Writer conditions. It looks like this would work with LibreOffice Base, where forms with list boxes can be created.

However, if you are trying to use values from a list box in a standalone Writer template or other document, then looking at that link, it does not seem possible. Writer conditions are restricted to document metadata, not the contents of the document.

One solution is to write a macro that pops up a dialog with a list box, and then when the dialog is closed, modify the Writer document based on the selected values. LibreOffice has a dialog development front end to help you set this up, and then you would need to write code to execute the dialog and do the changes. See https://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php for help writing the necessary code.