[Tutorial] Printing to Seiko Smart Label Printer

Forum rules
No question in this section please
For any question related to a topic, create a new thread in the relevant section.
Post Reply
Dugdoogle
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Apr 09, 2017 4:59 am

[Tutorial] Printing to Seiko Smart Label Printer

Post by Dugdoogle »

My label printer would not print the whole width of a page directly from OpenOffice.
The "export as PDF" solution did work but was very tedious.
I tried printing from Notepad and WordPad and there was no problem.
After reading about ten posts on requests for solutions and two days of experimentation I have found this simple solution which I offer in this tutorial:

Format a page to any default paper format (A4) is O.K. It is not necessary to select Landscape.
If "User" is the selected option (Format/Page.../Paper Format/Paper/User), the Page Width should be the same width (or more) than the size of the label (in the case of a Smart Label Printer 200 or possibly Dymo, width = 89mm) and the length MUST BE the same as this (or more).
Without seeing the OpenOffice program code, I suspect OpenOffice appends print commands to the end of the document to direct the printer to do carriage returns and other house-keeping chores. These are not "turned" when the document is oriented to landscape and OpenOffice coding may need modification in its next release.
Once the page is formatted, I find it is best to insert a table. This can contain any number of cells, but a simple address label need only contain one cell made slightly smaller than the actual paper label (89 x 28mm)(Table/Autofit/Column Width & Row Height) to allow for non-printing in the margins. If Table Format is then selected, under Text Flow, the Vertical Alignment can be set to Centered.

Australia Post offers guidelines as to the text format of an address field.
OpenOffice 4.1.3
Windows 7 Professional
Post Reply