Printing two-sided brochures in OpenOffice.org Writer: easy as pie, if you know a couple tricks about how to make pie

An email conversation with Don revived my interest in brochures.

I've got a template here for a tri-fold brochure. It uses connected frames.  Right-click on the link and choose to save it to your computer if you'd like to look at it.
 

However, what if you want something more normal, just something like this? You want to rotate a letter or A4 piece of paper 90 degrees, and fold it in half.

This means some juggling with the page printing order. For the folding to come out right, you need an eight-page brochure to print like this. Half are on one side of the paper and half are on the other.

You could do this through mental gyrations.  Or you can do it with the OpenOffice.org Writer brochure setting under print options.

You just need to do a few things to make it work well.

Step 1: Set up your page normally (portrait) but....

For whatever reason, the brochure printing prints a little short of filling the eight vertical inches appropriately. So for printing on letter size paper sideways, I recommend an 8 1/2 by 13 page size. Choose Format > Page, Page tab and set the size there. I also recommend mirrored setup and a nice big inner margin as shown.

Step 2: Make your content and heading fonts a little bigger  

The whole document will be shrunk when it's turned and printed so I recommend increasing all font sizes about 2 points, possibly more for extra readability.

Step 3: Print using the brochure options and print Landscape (additional details vary depending on your printer)

Choose File > Print. Click Options. Select the Brochure option. Click OK.

 

In the OpenOffice.org print window, just click Properties and find the option to print Landscape.

 

If your printer also lets you print double-sided, select that option too. And you're done.

If your printer doesn't do double-sided, you'll need to do this instead.

Print the brochure in two passes:

A) Choose File > Print and click Options. Set these options to print only half the pages:

B) In the print window, click Properties and set up the printer to print  landscape. Print.

C) Then put the pages that you've printed into the printer again, choose File > Print again, and choose these options instead to print the other half of the pages AND to reverse order.

And of course print Landscape this time too.

Here's a template if you'd like to download it and fiddle with it. Right-click on the link and choose to save it to your computer.

Download the template, with screenshots and directions.

Download the template without screenshots or directions.

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Comments

[Dennis Lubrin]

Hello. Thanks for the HowTO. I have always wanted to know if I could make brochures in Writer whenever I have to make a brochure for my classes. Normally, I do not have the time to look for alternatives, so I used my school's MS Publisher to do it. This tutorial will prove to be helpful in the future. Thanks a lot!

PS: Just to make sure, pictures and other graphics can be added to the separate pages? And, is it possible to make my own custom template which builds on top of yours? I know theoretically it should be possible. Well, thanks again.

[ilestre]

I love this. Thank you so much.

[Kensand]

Hi,
Your tutorial is a clear exposition of the process and agrees with my experience.
However I have noticed an anomaly concerning printing duplex.

If I have 4 A4 pages, and wish to print 2 A5 size booklets, I set Properties to - Orientation=Landscape, Duplex=On-Landscape.
Options - Left=On, Right=On, Brochure=On.
Print - Range=All, Copies=1.
And I get an A5 Brochure as expected.

But if in Print I set for 2 copies - I get 2 booklets,
one with only the odd pages, and one with only even pages.

Is this a problem with the printer driver or OOO-writer, or have I missed something?

Clearly when I print 20 page booklets I only ever print one at a time. I only noticed this problem when I tried to print several 4 page booklets.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Cheers,
Ken

[Solveig]

Hi Ken,

Interesting -- I've never tried that. I don't know though I would guess it's some issue with the logic of how "2" is interpreted.

[kensand]

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. It is an oddity and I can imagine the solution is buried deep in the logic of the programming.
It is not insuperable, I only need to revert to printing (left pages) single side, turning the stack of paper over and printing right pages.

Thanks again.

Ken

[sandy]

I know how to print the brochure to a printer but how do I send a two sided brochure through as an email. If I attach it It does not display the 2nd side.

Thanks

[Bryan]

Thanks for the tip. I'm wondering if I'm encountering a bug with OO3. When I try to print to a brochure (via the print options) I get extra white pages for documents that are larger than 4 pages. I even downloaded the template from the March 17, 2008 example (10 pages and it prints to 6 pages and I have 2 white sections for page 11 and then the back cover).

Follow-up. I added 2 more pages to the template I downloaded and it prints as I expect - to 6 pages.

Ok testing a theory, I have a 6 page OO document to print to brochure - should =3 pages but it prints to 4.

I can not get OO to print to an odd number of brochure pages. Does it work properly in 2.4?

[Bryan]

I found my problem. Not enough coffee. The real solution was to print it out duplex and see how it would really work instead of PDF files on the screen. I understand now what the brochure printing did to the number of pages and now I know better.

[Bryan]

I found my problem. Not enough coffee. The real solution was to print it out duplex and see how it would really work instead of PDF files on the screen. I understand now what the brochure printing did to the number of pages and now I know better.

[Bryan]

I found my problem. Not enough coffee. The real solution was to print it out duplex and see how it would really work instead of PDF files on the screen. I understand now what the brochure printing did to the number of pages and now I know better.

[solveigh]

Hi Bryan,

Coffee and pie, ya gotta have both. ;> Yes, when I wrote this I had to fiddle for a while before I remembered all the details.

[selena siadar]

hi well see,
i am grateful for the template of the brochure but, i dont know which page is which!
Help me!!!

[Leon Brooks]

Click on the text First Page.

Hit the down-arrow key, watching the cursor.

Problem solved?

[John]

I find that this is still a bad method of creating booklets. It doesn't give me the option of creating signatures for a larger book, also it doesn't allow me to create the book the actual size.

As much as I hate Office 2007, the bookfold option and booklet creation is much more straight forward and works better and easier. I hope that this is addressed in future editions as I prefer using OpenOffice for my word processing requirements.

I've been trying to easily create my own books for years, now it seems that I can do it with my work computer. Soon I hope to be able to do this at home.