Tuesday, August 5, 2014

OO Calc - Fit to Pages Printing

OO Calc - Fit to Pages Printing

Well, I'm back using OpenOffice in anger again (yay!!!) and have already referred back here more times than I can count for things I remember having problems with.  Time to add a few more entries.

A feature I use extensively in Excel that I have previously struggled to find in Calc is that of printing data fitted to x pages wide by y pages tall.

You may first need to define a print range.

Setting a Print Range

This wasn't where I expected it to be!

  • select range of cells you want included in your print out
  • go to Format | Print Ranges | Define
Now a neat little feature that I stumbled on by RTFMing - you can add non-contiguous cells to your print range!
  • once you've defined your print range, select another area of cells not currently part of it and select Format | Print Ranges | Add
If you want to change things like heading rows and columns to repeat, use the Edit menu item from Format | Print Ranges

Printing to x by y pages

  • Print Preview button
  • Format Page - opens a dialog box
  • Sheet tab
  • Bottom section is "Scaling".  Change Scaling Mode to "Fit Print Range(s) on number of pages. 
  • Then select how many page you want it fitted to.

Ok, I haven't played with wanting to fit to more than one page, but that's really what I always need, so I'm more than happy with that.

This is also the tab that you use for choosing to print gridlines, row & column headers and such like.

This is all properties of the 'Page Style', so you can modify it by just going to Format | Page instead of using the print preview if you prefer.