Creating pamphlet type docs

[sapperdan]

Hi there ,

Is there any sort of template in office that allows a pamphlet type document to be constructed or is there an existing template which can be transformed into such a format as to be able to form a pamphlet /magazine type program with multiple page . ie made from 2 sheets - 8 pages , 3 sheets - 12 pages , 4 sheets - 16 pages , etc.
ty for your help.

[acknak]

Just make a normal document. When you print, see File > Print > Options > Pages: Brochure.

Writer will arrange the pages and print them ready to be folded into a booklet.

[Theophan]

I'm brand-new to OpenOffice; just switched to the Mac a year ago and am trying not to use Microsoft software if I can avoid it. When I used to use Word on a PC, and told it I wanted to make a brochure, it created pages that were the actual size they'd be in the ultimate printout, so I could lay out images, for example, exactly the way I wanted on the (half-size) page. I'm having 2 problems so far with OpenOffice:

1) I gather that what I'm supposed to do in OpenOffice is to create pages that are 8.5x11" (for American letter-size paper) and then trust OpenOffice to convert those into half-size sheets for me. Is there any other way to do this? The main thing I make booklets for is my church choir, and a large part of many of the pages is a graphic of music for them to sing. It's REALLY helpful to be able to lay this out myself.

2) But the BIG problem is that I can't seem to get my printer to use landscape for this, so every attempt I've made with OpenOffice has been two "portrait" pages on a "portrait" sheet. I can't find a dialog to tell my printer to lay the two "portrait" pages out on a landscape sheet. Specifically, "File>Printer Settings" gets me what would seem to be the right dialog, but to the right of the printer (Canon iP4500 Series) is a button ("Options") that's grayed-out. I'm guessing that's where I'd have told my printer to use landscape. "File>Print" on the other hand gets me a dialog that's from my printer software, but that's not where you set landscape or portrait. There are a million options, but portrait and landscape are not among them. When I use Pages (Apple word processor), "File>Print" gets me the same dialog I get from OpenOffice, but "File>Page Setup", which I'd guess is the same function as OpenOffice's "File>Printer Settings" does give me an option for landscape or portrait.

Can anyone help me? So far, it looks like I just can't use OpenOffice for this task at all.

Thanks!

Theophan

[TheGurkha]

It's under File > Print > Options. However if that is greyed on your PC that doesn't help you.

Still, there is another way. Create your document in full-page size, just as yopu are doing now. I use a slightly larger font to compensate for the shrinkage (14pt is good). Then use the PDF button on the toolbar to create a PDF file of full-size pages.

Then download and install the free PDF Viewer PDF-XChange Viewer. Make sure you get the free one, they charge for the 'Pro' version.

Open your PDF file and then go to print from the PDF Viewer. It will convert any full-page PDF file to a booklet format by selecting Booklet from the Scaling Tyupe drop-down menu.

You can then choose to print all of the pages or just the Odd or Even pages using the Subset dropdown (depending on whether your printer does dowuble-sided printing automtically, or if you have to print one side, turn the papaer over and then print the other sides).

[Theophan]

Many thanks for the helpful reply! I can see that this probably would work. I have a few concerns that frustrate me. This approach is similar to another one available to me: software for the Mac (presumably the PC as well) that will convert the print output of a word processor into a booklet as you print it, I think. I see that the printer software for my printer also seems to be able to do this, and I may yet experiment with it.

But what's driving me crazy, here, is that these are work-arounds to a problem that Microsoft <shudder> solved quite well in Word many years ago. I still have my old PC that has a now-elderly version of Word on it, and if I create this document in Word, it automatically creates pages for me that are the final-output size (i.e., half of a piece of paper). My biggest concern is that for the choir booklets I'm creating, it can make a really big difference whether a certain line is on the same page as the large graphic of music for singing or the page before it or after it. With Word I was able to lay out pages exactly the way I wanted them, precisely, and know exactly what I was going to get.

I downloaded OpenOffice hoping it would be as good as Microsoft's product, but it looks like OpenOffice can't do this, and instead I must "design" full-page pages and hope that some software or other (PDF software or my printer software, etc.) may "re-design" those pages into half-size pages in a way I will like. With Word I was able to design the pages myself, and place things where I wanted them.

Unhappily, I really have a chip on my shoulder about Microsoft. I don't want to go back to my old PC because my wonderful Mac can't do this task as well <sigh>! And I don't want to give Microsoft more of my money for a copy of Word for the Mac because I'm so frustrated with all of the problems I've had with Windows computers over these many years. I'd almost rather buy InDesign (I use other Adobe products notably including Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Photoshop) than Word even though I don't really need InDesign's power and it will be a LOT more expensive than Word for the Mac.

Do you (or anyone lurking) have any idea who might have an idea why that "Options" button is grayed-out that might have let me pick landscape or portrait mode on my printer? I suspect that OpenOffice.org will tell me it's Canon's problem and Canon will tell me it's OpenOffice.org's problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks again!

[TheGurkha]

With OOo 3.0 you can work with pages side by side on-screen. By using the new slider zoom feature in 3.0 you can easily see how they will look when reduced.

Also the shrinking isn't re-designing - it is just scaling, it won't alter the layout or content, just makes it smaller.

As to why the options button is greyed out I don't know. I would check that your printer driver is OK and installed correctly etc. If OOo can't get the infor from the printer driver it won't be able to access the options for the printer. Can you get to the Options from other software packages?

(By the way, we're not 'Ooo' - just users trying to help other users. We're not the developers.)

[Theophan]

Maybe I'm not understanding you properly, and this will work better than I fear. I'm not sure I'm following you on scaling versus redesigning.

For these choir notebooks, some of the pages will be very nearly filled by a graphic of scored music that I'm creating in my music notation software. On those pages, it will be absolutely critical whether a line or two of text immediately above or below the nearly-page-filling graphic is on the same page as that graphic or gets automatically put on the previous or following page. If I create the document in full-size pages, the graphic will occupy a very much smaller portion of the page. With Word, I was able to see exactly what the final page would look like as I was typing, as I was positioning exactly where I wanted each graphic to go, etc..

I don't see how I can do that if I'm creating pages that are twice the size they'll wind up being, and then hoping some other software will fit them on half-size "pages" (two to a sheet) the way I want it to.

Am I misunderstanding you?

Thanks again for your effort to help!

Theophan

[TheGurkha]

Yes you're misunderstanding slightly.

When the pages are made smaller, everything that is on the big page is on the little page, in the same place and relationship to everything else around it. Nothing is moved from page to page, nor is it moved around on the page. It is just reduced in size.

It's like a photograph of your face. It makes your head smaller but it doesn't move your eyes and nose around.

[TheGurkha]

Download this file and extract the two PDFs in it.

One is the full size 4 page document, the other is the booklet form. As you can see it is just a matter of scale. Apart from the size, the pages are identical. Everything, including layout & content, is preserved, just in a shrunken form.

I'm in Europe so the page size for the full size doc is A4, and the smaller pages are two A5 pages per landscape A4 page.

Example Zip

[bones01]

Hi Gurkha,

I've seen your response to some other queries about the 'brochure' function, and will be testing it more and more next week. However, do I have to use a larger font to compensate for shrinkage, or is there a way that a size 12 font will always be a size 12 font?

Bones

[RoryOF]

While I have no problems with scaling, I prefer to work as follows: I change my page size to A5, so that I am working with real (i.e, not scaled) measurements and set up my publication for that size (I find 10.5 Georgia quite a good choice). Then I print it as a pdf file, selecting that it is to print to an A5 page. At one stage something wouldn't allow me select an A5 page - it didn't show it as available - and wouldn't allow me call a page A5, saying that it already existed (although it didn't show it!), so I defined a user page fA5 of exactly the correct size. I now get a booklet/brochure that is A5 in size and generates an A5 pdf.

Then, with my pdf, I open Adobe Reader, set my printer to print A4, Duplex, flipping on long side (built in Duplexer) and in Reader I select its Print function. I go down to Page handling box, select "Print Booklet" "Print both sides", "Binding Left" and let it get on with it. If I need smaller signatures (i.e. groups of pages), I select "Print Range, Pages 1-32", then 33-64, 65-96 etc., as that is about what my desk-type long-reach stapler can handle in comfort.

[TheGurkha]

@Bones01: An example without scaling: [Tutorial] Creating a Brochure with Writer.

[bones01]

@Bones01: An example without scaling: [Tutorial] Creating a Brochure with Writer.

Thanks for this Gurkha. You may have just saved a lot of headaches, wasted paper, and frustration. Appreciate your help.

Bones

[Jon]

I frequently use the brochure function to do pretty much what your want to do and have found it to be a bit quirky, but very usable without a lot of fuss.

First, you don't want to choose letter size for your page size. You want to choose a half sheet letter size. Odds are you will have to create a custom size. (I usually work with A4 paper, but on rare occasion with letter size.) Do all your work on this half-sheet size.

When it comes time to print, you need to do 3 things in the print dialog box (Ctrl-P or File > Print. I wouldn't fool with the File > Print settings menu.):
a) Click on "options" in the print dialog and check "brochure".
b) Click on "Print Settings" in the print dialog and go to the tab that allows you to choose the size of paper you're working with. Choose "Letter", not the size you are actually using.
c) While in the print properties, probably on the same page as where you choose the size, you should also be able to choose landscape.

For this to work, of course, you have to be able to print on both sides of the sheet. If you are not interested in printing on both sides, then your best bet is to simple start with a letter-sized sheet, go to page properties (Format > Page) and set the landscape mode ("page" tab) plus 2 columns ("columns" tab). After printing you can cut and order as you like, but that does not seem to be your goal.

If you find that your printer itself is what it setting limits on you, another PDF workaround I have found is to install Bullzip PDF printer (free from download.com, filehippo.com and possibly Tucows.com). After you install that, follow exactly the same instructions as above, but choose the Bullzip PDF printer rather than your Canon Printer. After the PDF file is produced, you can print it on your Canon.

[bones01]

@Bones01: An example without scaling: [Tutorial] Creating a Brochure with Writer.

Thanks for this Gurkha. You may have just saved a lot of headaches, wasted paper, and frustration. Appreciate your help.

Bones

Hi Gurkha,

Just printed off my sermon for Sunday, and it looks sweet. Hopefully it will sound even better than it looks, but it looks good.

Thanks for taking the time to put a tutorial together. I didn't even know the brochure option was there.

Enjoy the weekend.

Bones

[TheGurkha]

No worries, glad to help.

[mrdwab]

The instructions given by TheGurkha are very useful for creating a normal half-size (A5, for example) booklet, but what about if you wanted to make an A6 booklet?

Here's a solution that builds upon that concept to create (tiny) A6 booklets: http://news.mrdwab.com/2009-11-19/makin ... -easy-way/

[lgusaas]

Do you (or anyone lurking) have any idea who might have an idea why that "Options" button is grayed-out that might have let me pick landscape or portrait mode on my printer? I suspect that OpenOffice.org will tell me it's Canon's problem and Canon will tell me it's OpenOffice.org's problem.

Hi,
I just noticed your posts on this thread with a Mac specific problem.
Pamphlet printing does not work on Macs with OO.o 3.x.x.The printing part of OO.o is currently being redesigned which will include a fix for this problem. Unfortunately it won't be ready before OO.o 3.3 (sometime next year).

In the meantime, here is the workaround I use to print pamphlets to US Letter paper.
1. Format document to 1/2 letter size.(51/5 X 81/2)
2. Design/write document with content on each page like you want in each page in the booklet.
3. Export document as a PDF (File/Export as PDF)
4. Open saved PDF with Adobe Reader (free to download and has functions that Preview doesn't have)
5. Print document. In dialogue box that comes up there is a drop down menu next to "Page scaling:" Select "Booklet Printing". This will print your document in booklet form,two pages per side of paper in proper order for a booklet.
6. One more setting. I also use a Canon iP4500 printer. Go to the setting for "Duplex Printing & Margin" and under "Stapling Side:" select "Short side stapling (Top)".

[giguerek14]

Use this to make a pamphlet like lay out: http://www.ehow.com/how_4909979_make-brochure-open-office.html It helped me!