i usually like to be much more precise, but i'm sorry, i'm going to have to be 
less precise on this one. there's just too much going on. but still, it's a 
major annoyance, and it is hindering me from what i need to do to get my 
dissertation finished, so i am filing it.

the formatting rules of my school's library state that all figures and tables 
have to be on separate pages, one figure or table per page.

the pages containing the figures can be at the end of the document, or they can 
be interspersed with the text pages.

because much of my dissertation deals with a tutorial on using some software i 
wrote, it would be inconvenient to put all figures and tables at the end of the 
entire document and make a reader flip back each time. therefore, i decided to 
intersperse figure pages with text pages.

however, interspersing figure pages with text pages does *not* mean that there 
are large blank pieces of text pages where there is no text, as if someone 
inserted a manual break halfway down the page. instead, the text pages should 
be full, and at the next opportunity, a figure page is printed. the text beyond 
the anchor point should continue to fill out the rest of the page.

in struggling to get OOo to do this, i finally arrived at setting a frame, and 
on the Insert | Frame dialog, in the Type tab, in the 'Size' section, under 
both Width and Height, i click 'Relative' and set to 100%. this sets the frame 
to 100% of the available space on the page, and should shove all text off to 
the next page (or previous, if there is room left).

however, i encounter various problems in doing this, and have now spent 2 hours 
enduring crashes and unintended results, and still do not have what i want. 

in trying to do this, the problems encountered erratically are below. none of 
them hold consistently.

1) the frame sometimes *covers* text, instead of pushing it down

OR

2) writer crashes with an unrecoverable error *and* corrupts the file (luckily 
i have have automatic saves *and* backups set, or i would be sunk

OR

3) i have anchor set to 'paragraph'. the anchor-point icon (appearing in the 
text) is moveable, but sometimes does not want to move down or up a pararaph -- 
within a page or between pages.

OR

4) when i am lucky enough to get the thing as close to how i want it as 
possible with OOo (frame appears on immediate next page following anchor 
point), unfortunately, there is still a problem: the whole rest of the anchor-
point page (the page preceding the page containing the frame) is blank after 
the paragraph containing the text the frame is anchored to.

please help! thanks