Writer Guide

5

Chapter
Printing, Exporting,Faxing, and E-MailingThis PDF is designed to be read onscreen, two pages at atime. If you want to print a copy, your PDF viewer shouldhave an option for printing two pages on one sheet ofpaper, but you may need to start with page 2 to get it toprint facing pages correctly. (Print this cover page
separately.)CopyrightThis document is Copyright © 2005–2010 by its contributors as listed
in the section titled Authors. You may distribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of either the GNU General Public License, version 3 orlater, or the Creative Commons Attribution License, version 3.0 or
later.
All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.

Authors
Jean Hollis Weber
Michele Zarri
Agnes BelzuncePeter Kupfer
Robert Scott
Janet M. Swisher

Feedback
Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to:authors@documentation.openoffice.org

Publication date and software version
Published 25 March 2010. Based on OpenOffice.org 3.2.

You can download
an editable version of this document fromhttp://oooauthors.org/english/userguide3/published/

Contents
Copyright............................................................................................... 2
Introduction........................................................................................... 4
Quick printing........................................................................................ 4
Controlling printing...............................................................................4
Selecting print options for a document...............................................5
Selecting default print options............................................................6
Printing in black and white on a color printer....................................6
Previewing pages before printing.......................................................7
Printing a brochure................................................................................ 8
Printing envelopes.................................................................................9
Printing labels...................................................................................... 12
Sending a fax.......................................................................................14
Sending a fax through the Print dialog box......................................14
Adding a Fax icon to the toolbar (advanced).....................................14
Exporting to PDF.................................................................................14
Quick export to PDF.......................................................................... 14
Controlling PDF content and quality.................................................14
General page of PDF Options dialog box.......................................15
Initial View page of PDF Options dialog box..................................17
User Interface page of PDF Options dialog box.............................17
Links page of PDF Options dialog box...........................................19
Security page of PDF Options dialog box......................................19
Exporting to XHTML............................................................................ 21
E-mailing Writer documents................................................................21
E-mailing a document to several recipients......................................22
Digital signing of documents................................................................25

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing3Introduction
General information about printing and faxing documents from OOo is
provided in the Getting Started guide. This chapter describes someitems of particular interest to users of Writer.

Quick printing
Click the Print File Directly icon
to send the entire document to
the default printer defined for your computer.

Note

You can change the action of the Print File Directly icon tosend 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 Loadprinter settings with the document option.

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

Figure 1: The Print dialog box
On the Print dialog box, you can choose:• Which printer to use (if more than one are installed on yoursystem) and the properties of the printer—for example,
orientation (portrait or landscape), which paper tray to use, and4

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing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 orderto 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.

Figure 2: Printer Options dialog box

Selecting print options for a document
Selections on the Printer Options dialog box (Figure 2) apply to thisprinting of this document only. To specify default printing options forWriter, see “Selecting default print options” on page 6.
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 (oddnumbered) pages. These settings are useful when you want toprint on both sides of the page, but do not have a printer that
handles this automatically.
–
Print in reversed page order.
Controlling printing

5–Brochure—the results of this selection are discussed in“Printing a brochure” on page 8.

• In the Notes section, you can choose whether to print any notesthat 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 thesame choices as the Printer Options dialog box.
Other printer settings are found in Tools > Options >OpenOffice.org > Print, as shown in Figure 3. 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.

Figure 3. Print options for OpenOffice.org

Printing in black and white on a color printerYou 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 areavailable.
To print the current document in black and white or grayscale:1) Click File > Print to open the Print dialog box (Figure 1).
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Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing

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 inthe document. Click OK to confirm your choice and return to thePrint 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 Figure 3.
2) Select the Convert colors to grayscale checkbox. Click OK tosave the change.
To set up Writer to print all color text as black, and all graphics asgrayscale:1) Click Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > Print.
2) Under Contents, select the Print black checkbox. Click OK tosave 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 aredesigning a document to be printed double-sided, you may want to see
what facing pages look like. Writer provides two ways to do this:• View Layout (editable view) —see Chapter 1 (Introducing Writer).
• Page Preview (read-only view) —from which you can also print
multiple pages onto one sheet of paper.
To use Page Preview:1) Click File > Page Preview, or click the Page Preview button.
The Writer window changes to display the current page and thefollowing page, and shows the Page Preview toolbar in place of
the Formatting toolbar.

Figure 4. Page Preview toolbar
2) Click the Book Preview icon
their correct orientation.

Controlling printing

to display left and right pages in73) To print the document in this page view, click the Print pageview icon
to open the Print dialog box (Figure 1). Choose
your options and click OK to print as usual.
4) To choose margins and other options for the printout, click thePrint options page view icon
dialog box.

to display the Print Options

Figure 5. Print Options dialog box

Printing a brochure
You can print a document with two pages on each side of a sheet ofpaper, arranged so that when the printed pages are folded in half, thepages are in the correct order to form a booklet or brochure.
To print a brochure on a single-sided printer:
1) Plan your document so it will look good when printed half size(choose appropriate margins, font sizes, and so on). Click File >Print. In the Print dialog box (Figure 1), click Properties and be
sure the printer is set to the same orientation (portrait orlandscape) as specified in the page setup for your document.
(Usually the orientation does not matter, but it does forbrochures.)2) Click Options. In the Pages section of the Printer Options dialog
box (Figure 2), choose Brochure and Right pages. Click OK
twice to print the first side of each page.
3) Flip the pages and put them back into the printer, in the correctorientation to print on the blank side. You may need toexperiment a bit to find out what the correct arrangement is foryour printer.
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Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing

4) Click File > Print and check Properties to make sure the printersetup is still correct.
5) Click Options again. In the Pages section of the Printer Options
dialog box, choose Brochure and Left page. Click OK twice toprint the second sides.
6) If your printer can do double-sided, then click on the checkboxes
for Left pages, Right pages, and Brochure, and it should not
only do those but collate too.

Printing envelopes
Printing envelopes involves two steps: setup and printing.
To set up an envelope to be printed by itself or with your document:
1) Click Insert > Envelope from the menu bar.
2) In the Envelope dialog box, start with the Envelope tab. Verify,
add, or edit the information in the Addressee and Sender boxes(the “from” on the envelope).

Figure 6. Choosing addressee and sender
information for an envelope

Printing envelopes

9You can type information directly into the Addressee and Senderboxes, or use the right-hand drop-down lists to select the
database or table from which you can draw the envelope
information, if desired. See Chapter 11 (Using Mail Merge) for
details on how to print envelopes from a database.
3) On the Format page, verify or edit the positioning of theaddressee and the sender information. The preview area on thelower right shows the effect of your positioning choices.

Figure 7. Choosing positioning and size of elements
for an envelope
To format the text of these blocks, click the Edit buttons to theright. In the drop-down list you have two choices: Character andParagraph.
•
In Character, you can choose Fonts (Sizes...), Fonts Effects(Underlining, Color...), Position (Rotating/scaling...),
Hyperlink, Background and more.
•

In Paragraph, you can choose Indents & Spacing, Alignment,
Text Flow, Tabs, Drop Caps, Borders and Backgrounds.

4) In the lower left of this page, choose the envelope format from thedrop-down list. The width and height of the selected envelope
then show in the boxes below the selected format. If you chose apre-existing format, just verify these sizes. If you chose User
defined in the Format list, then you can edit the sizes.

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Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing

5) After formatting, go to the Printer page to choose printer options
such as envelope orientation and shifting. You may need toexperiment a bit to see what works best for your printer.
You can also choose a different printer or alter printer setup (forexample, specify the tray that holds envelopes) for this print job.

Figure 8. Choosing printer options for an envelope
6) When you have finished formatting and are ready to print, click
either the New Doc or Insert button to finish. New Doc makes
only an envelope or starts a new document with the envelope.
Insert puts the envelope into your existing document as page 1.
To not proceed with this envelope, click Cancel or press the Esc
key. You can also click Reset to remove your changes and returnto the original settings when the dialog box opened.
When the Envelope dialog box closes, you are returned to yourdocument, which now has the envelope in the same file as the
document. Save this file before you do anything else.
To print the envelope:1) Choose File > Print from the menu bar.
2) On the Print dialog box, under Print range, choose Pages andtype 1 in the box. Click OK to print.

Printing envelopes

11Printing labels
Labels are commonly used for printing address lists (where each labelshows a different address), but they can also be used for making
multiple copies of one label only, for example return-address stickers.
To print labels:
1) Choose File > New > Labels on the menu bar. The Labels dialog
box opens.
2) On the Labels page, fill in your own label text in the Inscriptionbox, or use the Database and Table drop-down lists to choose
the required information, as described in Chapter 11 (Using Mail
Merge).

Figure 9. Labels dialog box, Labels page3) Select the label stock in the Brand drop-down list. The types forthat brand then appear in the Type drop-down list. Select the size
and type of labels required. You can also select User in the Typedrop-down list and then make specific selections on the Format
page.
4) On the Format page, choose the pitch, sizes, margins, columns
and rows for user-defined labels, or just verify with a brand oflabel stock you have loaded into the printer.
12

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-MailingFigure 10. Labels dialog box, Format page5) Click Save to save your new format.
6) On the Options page, choose to print the entire page of labels or
one single label, then select which one by the column and row.
You can also change printer setup.

Figure 11. Labels dialog box, Options page7) When you have finished formatting, click New Document tomake your sheet of labels or click Cancel (or press the Esc key).
You can also click Reset to remove your changes and return tothe original settings when the dialog box opened.
8) You can print right away using the Print File Directly icon on
the toolbar or by choosing File > Print from the menu bar, or you
can save the file to print later.

Printing labels

13

Sending a fax
To send a fax directly from OpenOffice.org, you need a fax modem anda fax driver that allows applications to communicate with the fax
modem.

Sending a fax through the Print dialog box1) Open the Print dialog box (Figure 1) by choosing File > Print
and select the fax driver in the Name list.
2) Click OK to open the dialog box for your fax driver, where you canselect the fax recipient.

Adding a Fax icon to the toolbar (advanced)
You can set up a toolbar icon so that a single click sends the current
document as a fax. To add an icon for this purpose to a toolbar, see
Chapter 17 (Customizing Writer).

Exporting to PDF
OpenOffice.org can export documents to PDF (Portable Document
Format). This industry-standard file format for file viewing is ideal for
sending the file to someone else to view using Acrobat Reader or other
PDF viewers. Unlike exporting to other formats, PDF documents will
look exactly as the document appears on your screen. The only
limitation of PDF is that the recipient will not be able to edit the
document.

Quick export to PDF
Click the Export Directly as PDF icon
to export the entire
document using the default PDF settings. You are asked to enter the
file name and location for the PDF file, but you do not get a chance tochoose a page range, the image compression, or other options.

Controlling PDF content and quality
For more control over the content and quality of the resulting PDF, use
File > Export as PDF. The PDF Options dialog box opens. This dialog
box has five pages (General, Initial View, User Interface, Links, andSecurity). Make your selections, and then click Export. Then you are

14

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailingasked to enter the location and file name of the PDF to be created, andclick Save to export the file.

General page of PDF Options dialog box
On the General page (Figure 12), you can choose which document
pages to include in the PDF, the type of compression to use for images(which affects the quality of images in the PDF), and other options.
Range section• All: Exports the entire document.
• Pages: To export a range of pages, use the format 3-6 (pages 3 to6). To export single pages, use the format 7;9;11 (pages 7, 9, and11). You can also export a combination of page ranges and single
pages, by using a format like 3-6;8;10;12.
• Selection: Exports whatever material is selected.

Figure 12: General page of PDF Options dialog box

Exporting to PDF

15

Images section• Lossless compression: Images are stored without any loss ofquality. Tends to make large files when used with photographs.
Recommended for other kinds of images or graphics.
• JPEG compression: Allows for varying degrees of quality. A
setting of 90% works well with photographs (small file size, little
perceptible loss of quality).
• Reduce image resolution: Lower-DPI (dots per inch) images
have lower quality. For viewing on a computer screen generally aresolution of 72dpi (for Windows) or 96dpi (GNU/Linux) is
sufficient, while for printing it is generally preferable to use atleast 300 or 600 dpi, depending on the capability of the printer.
Higher dpi settings greatly increase the size of the exported file.
Note

EPS images with embedded previews are exported only as
previews. EPS images without embedded previews areexported as empty placeholders.

General section• PDF/A-1: PDF/A is an ISO standard established in 2005 for longterm preservation of documents, by embedding all the pieces
necessary for faithful reproduction (such as fonts) whileforbidding other elements (including forms, security, encryption,and tagged PDF). If you select PDF/A-1, the forbidden elements
are greyed-out (not available). Because the fonts are embedded in
the PDF file, the document will appear as the author intended
even if the machine where it is viewed does not support thechosen font types.
• Tagged PDF: Exports special tags into the corresponding PDF
tags. Some tags that are exported are table of contents,
hyperlinks, and controls. This option can increase file sizes
significantly.
• Create PDF form - Submit format: Choose the format ofsubmitting forms from within the PDF file. This setting overrides
the control’s URL property that you set in the document. There is
only one common setting valid for the whole PDF document: PDF(sends the whole document), FDF (sends the control contents),
HTML, and XML. Most often you will choose the PDF format.
• Export bookmarks: Creates PDF bookmarks for all outline
paragraphs and for all table of contents entries for which you
assigned hyperlinks.

16

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing• Export comments: Exports comments in Writer and Calc

documents as PDF notes. You may not want this!
• Export automatically inserted blank pages: If selected,
automatically inserted blank pages are exported to the PDF. Thisis best if you are printing the PDF double-sided. For example,
books usually have chapters set to always start on an oddnumbered (right-hand) page. When the previous chapter ends onan odd page, OOo inserts a blank page between the two odd
pages. This option controls whether to export that blank page.

Initial View page of PDF Options dialog box
On the Initial View page, you can choose how the PDF opens by default
in a PDF viewer. The selections should be self-explanatory.

Figure 13: Initial View page of PDF
Options dialog box

User Interface page of PDF Options dialog box
On the User Interface page (Figure 14), you can choose more settings
to control how a PDF viewer displays the file. Some of these choices
are particularly useful when you are creating a PDF to be used as apresentation or a kiosk-type display.

Exporting to PDF

17

Window options section• Resize window to initial page. Causes the PDF viewer window
to resize to fit the first page of the PDF.
• Center window on screen. Causes the PDF viewer window to becentered on the computer screen.
• Open in full screen mode. Causes the PDF viewer to open fullscreen instead of in a smaller window.
• Display document title. Causes the PDF viewer to display the
document’s title in the title bar.

Figure 14: User Interface page of PDF Options
dialog box
User interface options section• Hide menubar. Causes the PDF viewer to hide the menu bar.
• Hide toolbar. Causes the PDF viewer to hide the toolbar.
• Hide window controls. Causes the PDF viewer to hide otherwindow controls.
Bookmarks
Select how many heading levels are displayed as bookmarks, if
Export bookmarks is selected on the General page.

18

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-MailingLinks page of PDF Options dialog box
On this page you can choose how links in documents are exported to
PDF.

Figure 15: Links page of PDF Options dialog box
Export bookmarks as named destinations
If you have defined Writer bookmarks, this option exports them as“named destinations” to which Web pages and PDF documents canlink.
Convert document references to PDF targets
If you have defined links to other documents with OpenDocument
extensions (such as .ODT, .ODS, and .ODP), this option converts thefiles names to .PDF in the exported PDF document.
Export URLs relative to the file system
If you have defined relative links in a document, this option exports
those links to the PDF.
Cross-document links
Set up the behavior of the PDF links to other files. Select one among
the following alternatives:• Default mode: The PDF links will be handled as specified in youroperating system.
• Open with PDF reader application: Use the same application
used to display the PDF document to open linked PDF documents.
• Open with Internet browser: Use the default Internet browser
to display linked PDF documents.

Security page of PDF Options dialog box
PDF export includes options to encrypt the PDF (so it cannot be
opened without a password) and apply some digital rights management(DRM) features.
Exporting to PDF

19• With an open password set, the PDF can only be opened with the

password. Once opened, there are no restrictions on what theuser can do with the document (for example, print, copy, orchange it).
• With a permissions password set, the PDF can be opened byanyone, but its permissions can be restricted. See Figure 16.
• With both the open password and permission password set, thePDF can only be opened with the correct password, and its
permissions can be restricted.
Note

Permissions settings are effective only if the user’s PDF viewer
respects the settings.

Figure 16: Security page of PDF Options dialog box
Figure 17 shows the pop-up dialog box displayed when you click the
Set open password button on the Security page of the PDF Options
dialog box.

20

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing

After you set a password for permissions, the other choices on the
Security page (shown in Figure 16) become available. These selections
should be self-explanatory.

Figure 17: Setting a password to encrypt a PDF

Exporting to XHTMLOOo uses the term “export” for some file operations involving a changeof file type. OOo can export files to XHTML. Other formats may bemade available through extensions.
To export to XHTML, choose File > Export. On the Export dialog,
specify a file name for the exported document, then select the XHTML
in the File format list and click the Export button.

E-mailing Writer documents
OOo provides several ways to quickly and easily send a Writer
document as an e-mail attachment in one of three formats: .ODT(OpenDocument Text, Writer’s default format), .DOC (Microsoft Word
format), or PDF.
To send the current document in .ODT format:
1) Choose File > Send > Document as E-mail. Writer opens the email program specified in Tools > Options > Internet > Email. The document is attached.
E-mailing Writer documents

212) In your e-mail program, enter the recipient, subject, and any text
you want to add, then send the e-mail.
File > Send > E-mail as OpenDocument Text has the same effect.
If you choose E-mail as Microsoft Word, Writer first creates a .DOC
file and then opens your e-mail program with the .DOC file attached.
Similarly, if you choose E-mail as PDF, Writer first creates a PDF
using your default PDF settings (as when using the Export Directly as
PDF toolbar button) and then opens your email program with the .PDF
file attached.

E-mailing a document to several recipients
To e-mail a document to several recipients, you can use the features inyour e-mail program or you can use OOo’s mail merge facilities toextract email addresses from an address book.
You can use OOo’s mail merge to send e-mail in two ways:• Use the Mail Merge Wizard to create the document and send it.
See Chapter 11 (Using Mail Merge) for details.
• Create the document in Writer without using the Wizard, then use
the Wizard to send it. This method is described here.
To use the Mail Merge Wizard to send a previously-created Writer
document:
1) Open the document in Writer. Click Tools > Mail Merge Wizard.
On the first page of the wizard, select Use the current
document and click Next.

Figure 18: Select starting document

22

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-Mailing

2) On the second page, select E-mail message and click Next.

Figure 19: Select document type3) On the third page, click the Select Address List button. Selectthe required address list (even if only one is shown) and then click
OK. (If the address list you need is not shown here, you can click
Add to find and add it to the list.)

Figure 20: Selecting an address list4) Back on the Select address list page, click Next. On the Create
salutation page, deselect the checkbox by This document
should contain a salutation.

E-mailing Writer documents

23

Figure 21: Deselecting a salutation
5) In the left-hand list, click 8. Save, print or send. OOo displays a“Creating documents” message and then displays the Save, print
or send page of the Wizard.
6) Select Send merged document as E-Mail. The lower part of thepage changes to show e-mail settings choices.
7) Type a subject for your email and click Send documents. OOosends the e-mails.

Figure 22: Sending a document as an email message

24

Printing, Exporting, Faxing, and E-MailingDigital signing of documents
To sign a document digitally, you need a personal key, the certificate. A
personal key is stored on your computer as a combination of a private
key, which must be kept secret, and a public key, which you add to yourdocuments when you sign them. You can get a certificate from acertification authority, which may be a private company or agovernmental institution.
When you apply a digital signature to a document, a kind of checksum
is computed from the document’s content plus your personal key. The
checksum and your public key are stored together with the document.
When someone later opens the document on any computer with arecent version of OpenOffice.org, the program will compute thechecksum again and compare it with the stored checksum. If both are
the same, the program will signal that you see the original, unchanged
document. In addition, the program can show you the public key
information from the certificate. You can compare the public key withthe public key that is published on the web site of the certificate
authority.
Whenever someone changes something in the document, this change
breaks the digital signature.
On Windows operating systems, the Windows features of validating asignature are used. On Solaris and Linux systems, files that aresupplied by Thunderbird, Mozilla or Firefox are used. For a moredetailed description of how to get and manage a certificate, andsignature validation, see “Using Digital Signatures” in the OOo Help.
To sign a document:
1) Choose File > Digital Signatures.
2) If you have not saved the document since the last change, amessage box appears. Click Yes to save the file.
3) After saving, you see the Digital Signatures dialog box. Click Add
to add a public key to the document.
4) In the Select Certificate dialog box, select your certificate andclick OK.
5) You see again the Digital Signatures dialog box, where you can
add more certificates if you want. Click OK to add the public key
to the saved file.
A signed document shows an iconin the status bar. You can doubleclick the icon to view the certificate.

Digital signing of documents25