Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

NOT the appearance of the background color. The actual color of the paper -- how does one change that?

Here are three wrong answers:

Options -> OpenOffice.org -> Appearance -> Document background
This does not affect the color of the paper, just what it looks like while editing.
Format -> Page... -> Background -> Color
This only affects the background of text, not the margins, and also, there can be, and are, gaps between lines where color does not fill.
Format -> Styles and Formatting -> Page Styles -> Default -> Modify -> Background
Same as above. Does not affect margins & in-between lines.

How do I change the actual color of the paper / page itself within OpenOffice writer? Such that (for example), when I export a PDF, the background of the entire page will be some color other than white, including margins and space between text lines?

I would appreciate any actual solutions here. Asking me "why do you even want to do that" always drives me crazy, save that for talking to a mirror plzthx.

Recently, but I can't find the exact posting, someone (was it Gurkha? Edit: not Gurkha, but Tarostar) gave the URL of a utility that allowed a full area paper colour to be added to a .pdf file. This seemed to be the easiest way. Most (all?) other in OpenOffice workarounds had various problems, such as losing working margins, or giving patchy colour under tables or fields.

So there are utilities to do this for PDF's, but nothing internal to OpenOffice? I was afraid of that. Thanks for the straight answer. =)

If you do a Forum search using the search box on top right of the Forum screen, you will see the various discussions on the subject. If the utility mentioned serves its purpose, then it is not a major task to run the PDF file generated by OpenOffice through it.

I have found the URL in question. It is cited by Tarostar in posting
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 50#p151822
and is for a low cost commercial product.


That thread covers or references most of the workarounds

Sorry, but I use OpenOffice.org because it's free. Seems a major oversight to not have something as easy, I imagine, as changing a color for a page background.

Workarounds, commercial software - is not good enough, frankly. =)

Pdf toolkit (pdftk and PdftkBuilder: it is a freeware, opensource (Delphi source) software for manage pdf files.
PDFTK Builder is a free graphical interface to the Windows version of PDFTK making it much easier to use.

You need to create with OOo Writer a "Backgound" pdf file. This is a coloured page with 0 mm margins and without any text.
Then you export the your Writer document to pdf.
The PdftkBuilder will add the "background" file to your document, as "background color".

http://angusj.com/pdftkb/#pdftkbuilder

NOT the appearance of the background color. The actual color of the paper -- how does one change that?

If you want to change the actual colour of your paper just buy coloured paper. But I don't think that is what you are asking.

If you want to change the page colour on your computer, it is simple.
In OOo go to Format/Page. Under the section 'Page' set all margins to zero.
Under 'Background' select the colour you would like for the page background.
Under 'Borders' select borders for all four side, set border colour to the same as the background colour.
Set 'Spacing to Contents' to the value you wish to use for the margins on your page.
Done. Simple. Almost as simple as buying coloured paper.