Should I be doing this in Draw or Writer?

[nonenonenone]

Should I be doing this in Draw or Writer?

I am using open office 4.1.3.
Windows 7, and no, I cannot upgrade my OS.

I have very little knowledge, experience or
understanding of any software.

I am attempting to create a file that will be accepted by Office Depot for printing.

Office depot will print a manual from files in these formats:

pdf, doc, xls, ppt, jpeg, jpe, png, bpm, tif, tiff and rtf.

The content is both text and images.
Text was composed in Open Office Writer.
Images are JPG and are in color.

I have tried Exporting As PDF, but the resulting document then has no images!

As I scroll on text only pages, the scrolling is a bit slow. When I scroll on the images, it is not only slow, it frequently freezes.

The frame frequently goes completely blank / white, with the blue Open Office border still there at the top.

I have tried shutting down all other running programs, and rebooting. Makes zero difference.

I do not want to degrade image quality. This is
intended to be given as a gift and needs to be high quality, not pixellated blurry.

I think this needs to be ONE file to upload, so that Office Depot can print one manual. If I send multiple pages, I don't think it will come out correct.

[RusselB]

Welcome to the Forums.
Please read this topic which is similar to yours in regards to images in the PDF file.
There is no need to upgrade from Windows 7 for OpenOffice, though you might want to upgrade from OpenOffice 4.1.3 to OpenOffice 4.1.7, which is the latest version of OpenOffice.
Additionally I'd like to recommend that you use the User Control Panel and edit your forum signature to accurately reflect both your OS (which appears to be correct) and your OpenOffice version (which has a discrepancy).

[nonenonenone]

Welcome to the Forums.
Please read this topic which is similar to yours in regards to images in the PDF file.
There is no need to upgrade from Windows 7 for OpenOffice, though you might want to upgrade from OpenOffice 4.1.3 to OpenOffice 4.1.7, which is the latest version of OpenOffice.
Additionally I'd like to recommend that you use the User Control Panel and edit your forum signature to accurately reflect both your OS (which appears to be correct) and your OpenOffice version (which has a discrepancy).

You started your response with a link to a topic thread.
I don't mean to be rude or argumentative, but that isn't even remotely helpful.
Sort of like you said, "Oh, you need to change a tire? Go read this fifteen page story about a car accident in Japan that you won't be able to understand"

I can't be the first person to want to combine images and text. Where is the SIMPLE DIRECT tutorial aimed at casual users?

[RusselB]

I can't be the first person to want to combine images and text. Where is the SIMPLE DIRECT tutorial aimed at casual users?

You aren't, and some people, like myself, have had no problems. In my case, possibly due to the image format, image size, and file format (I didn't need to make a PDF), I had no problems.
You stated that it was a problem with images in the PDF, so I linked you to a related topic, which has a total of 12 posts. Not a long topic compared to some of them.
You ask where the SIMPLE DIRECT tutorial is, well, I'm going to guess that no one has taken the time to write it, but looking through the Tutorials section (which is where it would be), I did find Some useful hints on using images

When there is a topic that is already on-going and/or marked as Solved, we often will refer people to the relevant topic, in order to keep from having to repeat everything.
Did you even look at the topic I linked you to originally? I'm thinking you didn't, as it is directly related to the problems you were reporting.

[Hagar Delest]

I can't be the first person to want to combine images and text.

You nailed it. This is why we prefer posting links to previous discussions; as said by RusselB, if it has already been answered, why reinvent the wheel?

I did find Some useful hints on using images .

Right on spot, and the link was provided in the very same topic you had first linked!

Did you even look at the topic I linked you to originally? I'm thinking you didn't, as it is directly related to the problems you were reporting.

+1.

I have very little knowledge, experience orunderstanding of any software.

Then please be prepared to do some minimal homework that will certainly start with some reading.

[John_Ha]

I am using ... Windows 7, and no, I cannot upgrade my OS.

Yes you can.

You are extremely vulnerable if you stay with Windows 7 because Windows 7 and Windows 10 share a lot of code. Every time Microsoft releases a security fix for W10 hackers reverse engineer it to identify the problem it fixes. They then design an attack on W7 using that knowledge.

Go to Download Windows 10 to download and install W10.

See [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images for a discussion on how best to handle images.

It sounds like your images are too big - ie they have too many pixels. To solve your problem

1. Use Writer. Use embedded images, not linked images
2. Save as a .odt file
3. File > Export as PDF > General. Tick Reduce image resolution. Select 150 dpi for excellent quality, 300 dpi for fantastic quality etc. Select JPEG compression and choose any value greater than 85.
4 If you have any images with text they should be inserted as PNG or GIF files and not as JPG files which will destroy quality.

If you upload your .odt file someone will examine it and fix it. As it will be larger than 128 kB use Dropbox, Google Drive or a file sharing site.

Download these three files and test them. test.odt has this image in it and test.pdf was created from it using steps 3 and 4 above.