Printing in Impress

Printing presentations is a little more complex than printing other documents, because there might be notes, handouts, and other components that you might not want printed every time. If you just choose File > Print > OK, you'll get everything , including an outline. See Setting Printing Options and Printing a Presentation to make sure you're printing what you want.

Note

See Printer Setup and Printing on page 53 for more information. To print to a file, refer to Considerations for Printing to PostScript or PDF on page 77.

Finding Printing Procedures

Most of the procedures you need are in Chapter 4, Printer Setup and Printing , on page 53. In particular, see:

• Creating UNIX Printers and Faxes on page 54

• Quick Printing on page 75

• Setting Up Printing to PDF on page 67

• Printing to PostScript and PDF on page 77

• Printing Brochures on page 88

• Faxing on page 79

• Specifying Portrait or Landscape Orientation on page 83

• Specifying Print Settings for Bitmaps, Transparency, and Color /Grayscale on page 87

• And in the Mail Merge chapter, Printing on page 399

The rest of the procedures here cover Impress-specific printing or procedures that aren't worth sending you to the other side of the book for.

Note

The paper size you select is important; if you're having printing problems, check the paper size. If you're in the United States, for example, make sure you select Letter or Legal in the Printer Properties window. (Choose File > Print, select a printer, and click Properties. In the Paper tab, select the right paper size from the Paper size list.)

Printing More Than One Slide on a Page

Use either of the following methods ; the handouts feature gives you more control.

• Use the handouts feature (see Creating Slide Handouts on page 727) and select only Handouts in the Contents section of this window.

• You can also tile the slides so that each appears as many times as it can fit on one piece of paper. Be sure that your page size is smaller than the page size of the paper you'll print on, or it'll only fit once and no tiling will occur. Also be sure to match up your page orientation and printer orientation or you'll get unexpected results.

See also Fitting Multiple Pages Onto One Sheet on page 85 for information on documents throughout the program.

Cramming a Slide Onto a Page

Sometimes you just need to squish or expand a drawing to get the printed output right. If the slide is too big, you'll generally be notified when you print, and you can choose the Fit to Size option at that point. To be prepared ahead of time, however, you can mark the Fit to Size option using either of the following navigations:

Page Format Window

1. Choose Format > Page and click the Page tab.

2. Select Fit to size and click OK.

Note

If you want to print an image in landscape that's too long to fit the short way onto the landscape page, choose Format > Page. In the Page tab, select Landscape and select Fit to size, then click OK. If Fit to size isn't selected when you mark Landscape, it won't work to apply it after the fact.

Print Options Window

1. Choose File > Print and click the Options button.

2. Select the Fit to page option and click OK.

3. Click OK to print.

You also can refer to Fitting Multiple Pages Onto One Sheet on page 85 to see how it's done across the program.

Stretching a Small Slide to Fill a Page

There's a Fill entire page option in the Page Format window, but it doesn't have any effect. You can use the Scale field in the Paper tab of the Printer Properties window (File > Printer Setup, or File > Print > Properties.) (This works intermittently, but with enough consistency to be worth trying.)

Your best bet is to just manually enlarge the elements of the slide; increase font size, etc. Group the graphical elements of the slide, if there are more than one. Then see Resizing Objects on page 777.

Printing a Slide Several Times on One Page

You can tile the slide so that it appears as many times as it can fit on one piece of paper. Just choose Tools > Options > Presentation > Print and select Tile.

If you have more than one slide, each slide will be tiled several times on each piece of paper; you won't see all the slides tiled one after another.

Be sure that your page size is smaller than the page size of the paper you'll print on, or it'll only fit once and no tiling will occur. Also be sure to match up your page orientation and printer orientation or you'll get unexpected results.

Printing Without Dark Backgrounds

Figure 28-16 illustrates the effects of printing in grayscale or black and white.

Figure 28-16. Printing in grayscale or black and white

The original slide has a light blue center with bars at the side that fade from light to dark blue. The heading is dark blue and the text is black. If you have a presentation with a heavy dark background that you want to print without bringing your toner cartridge to its knees, you have a couple options:

• The simplest approach is to select either Grayscale or Black-and-White in the print options window (Figure 28-17 on page 745).

  Figure 28-17. Selecting printing options in Impress printing options window

  

• Remove the background (see Applying a Blank Background on page 705).

Backgrounds and File Size Issues

If you find that printing the presentation takes longer than it would to transcribe it onto paper by hand, check what's in the background. (See Presentation Backgrounds on page 700.) In general, it's a good idea not to use gradient fills, gradient text, or complex backgrounds in presentations because this drastically affects disk space, printing, or download time. You can do a colored background easily that doesn't take much disk space by choosing Format > Page and in the Page tab, selecting a color.

Specifying Landscape or Portrait Orientation

To specify whether the presentation should be portrait or landscape, choose Format > Page and select the Page tab. (This affects all slides in the document, if there is more than one.)

You can also set orientation in the Printer Options window. (Choose File > Printer Setup, click Properties and select the Paper tab.) However, all testing indicates that the setting in the Printer Setup window is completely irrelevant; sometimes it changes to reflect what you've set in the Page Setup window, but if you make any changes there, it doesn't affect printing. See also Specifying Portrait or Landscape Orientation on page 83 for more information on the ways you can set orientation throughout the program.

Setting Printing Options

1. Choose Tools > Options > Presentation > Print (Figure 28-17). (You can also choose File > Print and click the Options button.) Using the first approach applies the options you select to all subsequent documents; using the second approach applies the options only to the document you print next .

2. Select what you want to print. Be sure that you select only what you want to print, in the Contents area. If you want to print handouts for your audience, select only Handouts, not Drawing, as well.

Single print jobs and duplex printers

Be careful of the Create Single Print Jobs option in the Form Letter or Print Options window, for any application, when you print to a duplex printer. If this option is selected, each new print job will begin on a new page even if you are using a duplex printer. If this field is not checked then the first page of the second copy might be printed on the reverse side of the last page of the first copy, especially if there is an odd page number.

Printing a Presentation

1. Check printing options to choose what parts of the presentation to print (see Setting Printing Options).

   In particular, be sure to select only Drawing if you just want a regular printout; only Handouts if you want handouts but not the regular presentation, etc.

2. Choose File > Print.

3. Select a printer, or select the Print to file option and enter a file name. To print to a PostScript file, enter a name with a . ps extension.

4. Select what to print: All (the entire document), Pages (a range of pages), or Selection (the currently selected text or objects). Use dashes to form ranges, and use commas or semicolons to separate pages or ranges (1, 3, 4, 6-10).

   The page range refers to slides, not pages. If you're printing handouts, keep in mind that entering a range of 1-4 will print only 4 slides, which is only one or two pages.

   Note

   The program often defaults to Selection, rather than All, as the range of pages to print. Check this each time you print.

5. Enter the number of copies and choose whether to collate . Click OK.

Note

If all slides or layers aren't printing, check whether the layers are printable (see page 661) and whether the slides are hidden (page 677). You can choose whether to print hidden slides, using print options (Figure 28-17 on page 745) but you need to go back to the layer tab in the presentation to switch it back to being printable.