Creating brochures in Write

[agsteele]

I am in the process of moving away from my much loved office suite (WordPerfect) to stay with colleagues who are now using either Word or LibreOffice.

There are many tasks I have previously undertaken and which worked seemlessly and which I am sure should work just as well in LO. But, of course, I try to do things the way I have previously learned. But I suspect there are, as they say, many ways to skin a cat…

So I am attempting to take a number of documents which were created in WordPerfect and which when printed create a very simple booklet. Typically they are four pages in each booklet. So when I finally print the booklet needs to appear from the printer double sided with pages 1 and 4 on the back and 2 and 3 on the front. I can then fold in two to complete the process.

In WordPerfect I create these simply by switch to A4 landscape, using the function to divide the page, I have four A5 pages into which the content is typed. But when I select print as a booklet WordPerfect does the magic and creates the booklet for me.

In LO I am presented with four separate A5 pages which are laid out OK with some tweaking. In the printer dialogue I can select brochure which seems to do the trick. I can select double side print in the printer dialogue but the double side stuff doesn’t work.

If I use the settings in the printer dialogue the double side works but the printer assumes that each side of the booklet is printed on A5 so it is all half size.

My only solution so far is to print the front only, manually turn over the paper and then print the back. This doesn’t feel right intuitively.

I suspect that I’d be better starting from scratch with a new document and creating the brochure document in a manner that will work without a problem.

Does anyone have any advice on creating and then printing brochures/booklets in LO? Or able to point me to a tutorial on the same? The wiki and WriterGuide seem to tell me how to print a brochure but there’s no advice on how to lay out a brochure to do the task. I have LO 4.2.3.3

Thanks in advance.

Andrew

[carolynboice]

I hope by now someone has figured out how to do a brochure, but the comments here have not helped me. I also used Word Perfect to create an 8 page newsletter/brochure/booklet for the Senior Citizen’s Center in my city which was a cinch in WP. Now on my new computer in Libre which thankfully converted my WP files so I could open them in Libre. I don’t understand the A3,4,5,6 part. When I follow the Writer PDF manual-printing section on brochures,

[carolynboice]

Continued: I still get tiny printing and not in the right places. Incidentally, I can’t get automatic numbering on the bottom of the pages. Obviously I’m missing something in the translation. I’ve had to go back to my old computer the past 3 months because I can’t figure this out. HELP!!!

[petermau]

Wordperfect and LibO do have different methods of creating a brochure, and it may seem strange at first moving from one to another. In LibO a brochure is essentially just a printing option. Anyway, this is my understanding of the procedure. Assuming you are creating a four page portrait brochure to be printed on A4 paper. The brochure option takes the pages and prints them two up, rotating and reordering the pages. They will thus appear to be two A5 pages per page. Although this may seem an overkill with the obvious A4 A5 A6 relationship, this option is particularly useful if you are using other papersizes for brochures such as Letter. There is no standard half/letter.

If the printer is a duplex printer, selecting the All Pages option will print all four pages at once. Otherwise you need to select the Back sides and Front sides to print each side of the brochure.

If you just wish to print the pages as normal, unselect the brochure option and print the page as normal A4. Hence to print a brochure in A5 size, create the document as a normal A4 document with the orientation needed. If you create an A5 document and print it brochure, it will be double sided but each page will be A6 i.e rather tiny.

It is important to remember that the page will be resized in brochure format, so choose font sizes to match. Hope this helps and welcome to LibrO… Peter

[dajare]

It’s easy-peasy in LibreOffice, too.

1. Set up your document for booklet printing in A4, just as you normally would. It will eventually print to A5 equivalent, though, so you might want to bump up point-size, margins, etc. to compensate. I find 14-point of (e.g.) Bitstream Charter to be nicely legible with brochure printing.
2. When you have your document ready for printing, choose File > Print... from the menu bar. Then go to the Page Layout tab.
3. Click the “radio button” for for “Brochure”, and (assuming you’re printing duplex), make sure “Page sides” shows “All pages”. (Screenshot below.)
4. Back to the General tab, and ensure that the Properties... for your printer are set to “Duplex” and “Short Edge”.
5. Print!

You should now have your 4-page “booklet”/brochure with the pages in correct order when folded. You can get some “official” advice from the online help or from the Writer PDF manual - printing section. Hope this helps!

[agsteele]

Thanks for the two responses. Both were helpful but it was particularly useful to grasp the fact that I should create the document in A4 and let LibreOffice shrink it when creating the booklet/brochure.

I don’t find that overly intuitive but it works so thanks for the help.

Andrew

[carolynboice]

Are you saying that you create your pages in portrait and Libre shrinks it to fit two pages on one side? What font size do you use then?