It doesn’t matter what I do, LibreOffice write (running on Ubuntu 16.04) prints #10 envelopes as though they were 8.5 by 11 sheets of paper so that when I insert an envelope into my Lexmark cx 317 dn printer, the sender’s information is missing and the addressee is nowhere near where it’s supposed to be. I have tried all of the options on insert envelope and I have tried all the options on format page and nothing comes out right.
I hear your pain. Never having printed envelopes, I don’t really know what I am talking about. From what you describe, however, it sounds as if the printer is not interpreting the format correctly for envelopes. (I assume it prints pages just fine.) Is it possible to not tell the printer to do an envelope and to insert the envelope as if it were just a sheet of paper? Or, have your tried creating a Template with the addresses where they belong and getting the printer to print that? Ideas.
ve3oatis right, from LibreOffice’s (and other word processors) point of view and envelope is just another piece of paper with other measurements.
So either your document format is for a wrong paper size, or the printer doesn’t get the right information to print on this envelope size.
please check this video out:
Quoting: “Why, after 20 or more years, can’t LibreOffice Write (Writer) print envelopes?”
A guess: You didn’t contribute to the development.
The oldest version under the name of ‘LibrOffice’ was 3.3. from january 2011.
Among the predecessors were some versions of StarOffice (since about 1995 and up to V9.4 by StarDivision and by SUN and some versions of OpenOffice.org (partly SUN, partly ORACLE time) starting with 1.0 in 2002.
My system hosts a virtual Windows XP Microsoft Office 2000. With MS Word I can print any kind of envelope with the Lexmark cx317dn printer, but LibreOffice Write can’t. This is true with newer versions of Windows and newer versions of Word. It is also true of every version of Ubuntu I have ever used.
In addition to not printing envelopes, I have never had a scanner that worked properly with any version of linux scan applications, but all my scanners have always worked with PaperPort which is a Windows application running on my virtual Windows. So whenever I print envelopes of scan documents, I have to go to my Windows guest and run Windows applications.
It appears that the problem is not with Libre Office but with the drivers that come with the Ubuntu package. The drivers in the Ubuntu package are for the Lexmark cx310 series, but not all printers in that series are the same. I have requested support from Lexmark and they have someone working the problem. Let’s hope they fix it.
The problem is only with envelope #10. See https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51132 and some other issues, search for “envelope #10” in Bugzilla. Workaround: Do not use the wizard. Manually set the page size to values, which are a little bit smaller than the envelope. If the printer does not offer the correct size automatically (Watch preview in print dialog), then enable “use paper size from printer preferences” in the Options tab of the print dialog and set the envelope size in the printer preferences.
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Thank you. I had forgotten about the “use paper size from printer preferences” option that I had set long ago and then needed to set again after I upgraded the printer. Happy to have the #10 envelopes printing again.
How should somebody answer a “question” like “Why, after 20 or more years, can’t LibreOffice Write print envelopes?”
In fact it’s not a question but a scolding.
Yes. I’m aware of the fact that this is not an answer.
That this “question” has been viewed so many times seems to indicate some level of importance for LibreOffice users.
No doubt.
However, relevance of a problem shouldn’t require to distort the respective question.
I noticed that different envelopes and even different printer drivers behave differently.
In this regard I’ve added comments to the above mentioned bug report.
The skinny is this. It appears that some combinations of envelope and printer work and some don’t. So if you can, try another printer, and also another envelope size. If the width of your envelope is wider than your Letter (or possibly your main document width), then this causes the envelope to have to print in landscape mode, which might be the source of some of these bugs.
The software to get all of this right is complex to say the least, and it requires careful handshakes between LO, printer driver, printer driver filters, and printer.
Just be aware that some of these issues could be with your printer or printer driver and not LO, although others of these issue seem like they are definitely inside LO.
For now, I’ll be hand writing my envelopes, or possibly cutting and pasting addresses to an envelope.
Problem and Workaround:
I totally gave up on Insert / Envelope. I found that even trying to define a user defined size of #10 size and manually entering the right width and height would cause it to automatically (!) change it from user defined to the built in #10 incorrect size right before my eyes, with a height of about 16 cm! So user defined did not work. That Insert / Envelope menu item should probably be removed from Writer.
But I found a simple and effective workaround.
Simply open a usual document, go to Format / Page, and from there change the Format to #10 envelope. That works! The page is correctly defined.
I then selected Insert / Text Box a couple times, and entered the return address and send address. Then select the boxes, one by one of course, right-clicked, and selected Position and Size. Then changed the rotation angle to 270 degrees. Then manually dragged the boxes to where I wanted, top right and centered respectively.
Then printed. Works great. Whew!
One other thing, I put the envelope in the manual feed of my printer of course. But if you have the printer properties set to double sided, it got confused and told me it was a size error. Not again! But it wasn’t a size error. I simple set the document to single sided printing temporarily, and the envelope printed beautifully.
Fixed for me thanks to a suggestion posted on ask.libreoffice.org:
Wrong default envelope size, impossible to correct
Went to /home/user/.config (dotfile folder where config files are kept). Deleted the libreoffice folder. Reopened writer, went through the insert - envelope routine. Set format for #10 envelope. WORKED PROPERLY.
That fixed it for me also. Apparently some junk leftover from version upgrades was breaking the envelope size/print function.
It would appear that a more recent upgrade fixed your work around so it no longer works.
The only way I have found to make it print properly is to adjust the margins of the sender and receiver text boxes after inserting the envelope into the document. This is a trial and error process where you have to ruin at least one envelope to figure out the offsets.