Documentation/How Tos/Printing Handouts With 2 to 6 Slides on a Page

Checked for technical accuracy mwaller june08

First, create your presentation and get it how you want it.

Specifying the Number of Slides per Page

1. In your open presentation, just click the Handouts tab above the slide view.
2. In the Layouts tab on the right side choose the number of slides you want per page.

Setting Up and Formatting Handouts

• The default page layout is Landscape. If you want Portrait (vertical), choose Format > Page and select Portrait, then click OK.
  Back in the main layout window, drag the slide placeholders to different locations if you want to change where they are.

• If you want horizontal lines for people to take notes on, you will need to use the line tool to draw a set of 3-4 lines by the first slide yourself.
  To make them even after you have drawn them, select them all, right-click and choose Alignment > Right (or Left, or Center).
  To distribute them evenly after you have drawn them, select them all, right-click and choose Distribution. Choose Vertical and Center.
  Then copy that group of lines when they are how you want them (might want to group them first), and copy the lines to the other slides on the page.

• If you want a page number at the bottom of each piece of paper (not every slide), use the Text tool to draw a text box at the bottom of the page, and type the word "page" if you want. Then choose Insert > Fields > Page Number to add an automatically incrementing page number.

Printing Handouts

Now that you have done the setup, you are ready to print.

1. Choose File > Print.
   • In OpenOffice.org 3.0 select Handouts in the Print content section.
   • In OpenOffice.org 2.x click the Options button. And in the Contents section of the Printer Options window, make sure that only the Handouts option is selected.
     The default is for Drawing to be selected. That means you get one big slide per page. You absolutely must select Handouts here to print handouts. If you leave Drawing selected, your printer will also spit out a printout of your presentation with one slide on every page.
2. Click OK to save the changes and close the window.

If you want to print just a subset of the pages, in the Print window, select the Pages option and type 1, 1-6, or something similar. The page count refers to slides, not pieces of paper. Also, if you want to print slides 1-6 and 13-18, you need to type a semicolon between the ranges, as in 1-6;13-18

A warning message box may ask you how to proceed if transparent objects are to be printed. You may want to print without transparency, which can reduce printing time considerably on some printers.

This How To comes from Solveig Haugland's Blog

Content on this page is licensed under the Public Documentation License (PDL).