Greek characters (α, β, γ, θ, etc.) are common in mathematical formulas. These characters are not available in the Elements window or the right-click context menu in Math. Fortunately, the markup code for Greek characters is very simple. We just need to type a ‘%’ sign followed by the name of the character, in English.
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- To write a lowercase character, type the name of the character in lowercase.
- To write an uppercase character, type the name of the character in uppercase.
- To write in italic, add an ‘i’ between ‘%’ sign and the name of the character.
So as an example, if we need to write ‘β’, simply write ‘%beta’ in the editor window.
Another way to enter Greek characters is by using the Symbols catalog window. To open the catalog window, click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu bar and from the resulting menu, click on ‘Catalog’. In this window, under ‘Symbol set’, select ‘Greek’ and then double-click on the required Greek letter from the list. The markup name of the character gets displayed below the list window. After selecting the required Greek character from this list, click on ‘Insert’. This will insert the selected Greek symbol.
Changing a formula after it has been written
Changing a formula is very simple in LibreOffice Math. Simply double-click on the portion of the formula that needs to be changed. This will highlight the markup code for that portion in the editor window. Now replace this markup code with the code for the required symbols and the formula will get changed accordingly.
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To insert ‘7 x 8’, right-click inside the editor window and this will display the context menu. This menu displays the different symbol categories. Select ‘Unary/Binary Operators’ and this will give a new menu which displays all the symbols under this category. From this list, select ‘a times b’. This will display the markup, ‘<?> times <?>’ in the editor window.
Here, replace ‘<?>’ with the required numbers. We will insert the numbers ‘7’ and ‘8’. After replacing the values, the required formula, ‘7 x 8’ will get inserted into Math.
So the different symbols can be inserted by choosing the right category and then selecting the appropriate symbol from that category. Here we want to insert ‘7 x 8’. This will fall under the ‘Unary/Binary Operators’ category. Select this category and then from the bottom part of the Elements Window, select ‘a x b’. This will display the markup, ‘ times ’ in the editor window. 
Here, replace ‘’ with the required numbers. We will insert the numbers ‘7’ and ‘8’. After replacing the values, the required formula, ‘7 x 8’ will get inserted into Math.
In the ‘Options’ dialog box, under ‘LibreOffice’, in ‘User Data’ we have options to enter user info. The user name can be set here.
If ‘Tips’ are enabled you can place the mouse pointer over any icon to see a small tooltip box, which provides a small explanation for the functioning of that icon.
In order to make more custom changes, click on the percentage figure on the status bar. This opens the ‘Zoom & View Layout’ dialog. The appropriate changes can be made by selecting the desired values from this dialog.
The top-most portion shown in the above illustration is the ‘Main Menu Bar’. This is the most important menu bar in the Math application and most of the operations in Math can be performed from here. In this tutorial, we are going to use the main menu bar for performing a variety of different operations.