Controlling printing

OpenOffice.org 2.x Writer Guide

Chapter 5: Printing, Faxing, Exporting, and Emailing

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• Controlling printing
• Printing a brochure
• Printing envelopes
• Printing labels
• Sending a fax
• Exporting to PDF
• Exporting to other formats
• E-mailing Writer documents
• Digital signing of documents

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Using the Print dialog box

For more control over printing, use File > Print to display the Print dialog box.

The Print dialog box.

On the Print dialog box, you can choose:

• Which printer to use (if more than one are installed on your system) and the properties of the printer—for example, orientation (portrait or landscape), which paper tray to use, and what paper size to print on. The properties available depend on the selected printer; consult the printer's documentation for details.
• What pages to print, how many copies to print, and in what order to print them.
  • Use dashes to specify page ranges and commas or semicolons to separate ranges; for example: 1, 5, 11-14, 34-40.
  • Selection is the highlighted part of a page or pages.
• What items to print. Click the Options button to display the Printer Options dialog box.

Selecting print options for a document

Selections on the Printer Options dialog box apply to this printing of this document only. To specify default printing options for Writer, see Selecting default print options.

Printer Options dialog box.

Some items of interest on the Printer Options dialog box include:

• In the Contents section, you might choose not to print graphics or page background in drafts, for example (to save toner or ink).
• In the Pages section, you can choose:
  • Print only left (even-numbered) pages or only right (odd-numbered) pages. These settings are useful when you want to print on both sides of the page, but do not have a printer that handles this automatically.
  • Print in reversed page order.
  • Brochure: the results of this selection are discussed in Printing a brochure.
• In the Notes section, you can choose whether to print any notes that have been added to your document (using Insert > Note), and where to print the notes.

Selecting default print options

Selections on the Printer Options dialog box over-ride any default settings. To specify default settings for printing, use Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > Print. The page displayed contains the same choices as the Printer Options dialog box.

Other printer settings are found in Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Print. Use this page to specify quality settings for printing, and whether to have OOo warn you if the paper size or orientation of your document does not match the printer settings.

Printer options for OpenOffice.org

Printing in black and white on a color printer

You may wish to print documents in black and white on a color printer, to save expensive color ink or toner. Common uses are for drafts or documents to be photocopied in black and white. Several choices are available.

To print the current document in black and white or grayscale:

1. Click File > Print to open the Print dialog box.
2. Click Properties to open the properties dialog box for the printer. The available choices vary from one printer to another, but you should find an option for Color. See your printer's help or user manual for more information.
3. The choices for color may include black and white or grayscale. Choose one of these. Grayscale is best if you have any graphics in the document. Click OK to confirm your choice and return to the Print dialog box, then click OK again to print the document.

To set up OOo to print all color text and graphics as grayscale:

1. Click Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Print to display the dialog box shown in Selecting default print options.
2. Select the Convert colors to grayscale checkbox. Click OK to save the change.

To set up OOo Writer to print all color text as black, and all graphics as grayscale:

1. Click Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > Print.
2. Under Contents, select the Print black checkbox. Click OK to save the change.

Previewing pages before printing

The normal page view in Writer shows you what each page will look like when printed, but it shows only one page at a time. If you are designing a document to be printed double-sided, you may want to see what facing pages look like. OOo provides a way to do this in Page Preview.

1. Click File > Page Preview, or click the Page Preview button . The Writer window changes to display the current page and the following page, and shows the Page Preview toolbar in place of the Formatting toolbar.


Page Preview toolbar.

2. Click the Book Preview icon to display left and right pages in their correct orientation.
3. To print the document in this page view, click the Print page view icon to open the Print dialog box. Choose your options and click OK to print as usual.
4. To choose margins and other options for the printout, click the Print options page view icon to display the Print Options dialog box.


Print Options dialog box.