Printing from Writer

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 2.x

Chapter 6: Getting Started with Writer

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• The Writer workspace
• Creating a new document
• Saving a document
• Working with text

• Cutting, copying, and pasting text
• Moving paragraphs quickly
• Finding and replacing text
• Inserting special characters
• Inserting dashes and non-breaking spaces
• Setting tab stops and indents
• Checking spelling
• Using AutoCorrect
• Using word completion
• Using AutoText
• Inserting notes

• Formatting text

• Using styles
• Formatting paragraphs
• Formatting characters
• Autoformatting
• Creating numbered or bulletted lists
• Hyphenating words

• Undoing and redoing changes
• Tracking changes to a document

• Recording changes
• Accepting or rejecting changes and comments

• Formatting pages

• Choosing a layout method
• Creating headers and footers
• Changing page margins

• Numbering pages

• Including the total number of pages
• Restarting page numbering
• Changing the format of page numbers

• Creating a table of contents
• Creating indexes and bibliographies
• Printing from Writer

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This section describe some general features of printing from Writer. For details on printing brochures, envelopes, and mailing labels, see Chapter 5 (Printing, Faxing, Exporting, and E-mailing) in the Writer Guide.

For quick printing, click the Print File Directly icon File:PrintFileDir.png to send the entire document to the default printer defined for your computer.

(New in OOo 2.3) You can change the action of the Print File Directly icon to send the document to the printer defined for the document instead of the default printer for the computer. Go to Tools > Options > Load/Save > General and select the Load printer settings with the document checkbox.

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

On the Print dialog, 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.

Selecting print options for a document

Some items of interest on the Printer Options dialog 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: See Chapter 5 in the Writer Guide for details.
• 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.

Printer Options dialog
Printer Options dialog.

Selecting default print options

Selections on the Printer Options dialog 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. See Chapter 5 in the Writer Guide for more about this dialog.