[Solved] Brochure mode leaves space at bottom

[qirien]

I have a directory of names, addresses, and phone numbers that I want to print in brochure mode. Everything looks good except there is a huge space at the bottom that looks pretty ugly. Now, I'm guessing this is because I'm using Letter sized paper, which isn't exactly the same proportions when chopped in half (unlike nice A4 paper). But, it seems like there should be some way to get around this.

I tried creating a document with a page size of exactly half a Letter-sized piece of paper, but there was no way to tell OpenOffice to print two pages together in a brochure mode.

I'm running 2.3.0 on Debian Linux. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

[foxcole]

I have a directory of names, addresses, and phone numbers that I want to print in brochure mode. Everything looks good except there is a huge space at the bottom that looks pretty ugly. Now, I'm guessing this is because I'm using Letter sized paper, which isn't exactly the same proportions when chopped in half (unlike nice A4 paper). But, it seems like there should be some way to get around this.

I tried creating a document with a page size of exactly half a Letter-sized piece of paper, but there was no way to tell OpenOffice to print two pages together in a brochure mode.

I'm not quite sure I understand...

I commonly edit books for self-publishing authors who want the book printed on half-letter size pages. The file would be duplex printed on a stack of standard letter size sheets to be folded or cut and bound in the middle, resulting in a half-page size book in the correct page order. Is that what you're trying to do?

[acknak]

You're right, the spacing is due to the difference in aspect ratio, and there's no way to adjust the layout of the brochure-printing mode.

I tried creating a document with a page size of exactly half a Letter-sized piece of paper, but there was no way to tell OpenOffice to print two pages together in a brochure mode.

In that case, you can use the File > Page Preview > Print page view to print your pages 2-up. There is a "Print options" dialog there as well, where you can make any needed adjustments. However, this only combines the pages, it won't rearrange them like the brochure mode does.

To do a reasonably good job of book/booklet/brochure printing, you really need to use other software beyond OOo. You can use OOo to create a PostScript file, or PDF file, but then you need other utilities or software to take that and rearrange and print the pages. OOo just isn't flexible enough, even though it has the basic tools.

[qirien]

In that case, you can use the File > Page Preview > Print page view to print your pages 2-up. There is a "Print options" dialog there as well, where you can make any needed adjustments. However, this only combines the pages, it won't rearrange them like the brochure mode does.

OK, I'm happy to discover there is a way to do this! My brochure isn't too long, so I can just manually put the pages in the right order. Thanks for the help!