[Solved] Customizing layouts for Handouts printing

[ebneto]

Welcome beginner. Please answer all of the questions below which may provide information necessary to answer your question.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which version of OpenOffice.org are you using? 2.3.1
What Operating System (version) are you using? Windows XP Pro
What is your question or comment? How can I customize the layouts for Handouts printing ?

[Phil]

Hi and welcome to the community!

Have you read the Forum Survival Guide?

I suppose you refer to printing handout pages with Impress, right?

The possibilities to print handouts are unfortunately quite restricted in Impress.
Maybe you can check in the options of your printer driver if you can print several pages on one sheet.

Another workaround is to create a PDF from the presentation and to reformat it using free pdf tools like e.g. PDFill which allow to reformat to multiple pages.

KR, phil

[acknak]

The "Notes view" printing is very restricted in Impress. The handout view seems fairly flexible to me.

Choose Handout view (tabs at top of middle screen panel).
Choose "Layouts" in the right panel; choose one that has the number of slides you want per page.

You can move the slides around on the page in the center panel using the mouse. You can add text, lines, boxes, etc. using the Drawing tools at the bottom of the window.

Here's a sample that has a customized handout layout.

[Phil]

Hi again,

I admit acknak's hint is the better one.

I remember having used the handouts feature in some old OOo version where printing of the handout pages took ages (and creating handout PDF files blew them up) because the pages were printed as pure graphics, i.e. the text and vector graphics were converted to bitmaps.
This is not anymore the case in the newer versions, as I just tested, so the feature is really cool.
It even outperforms PowerPoint, where the options to change the handouts layout are not that manifold.

KR, phil

[Nabukadnetsar]

Thanks for this guys, very useful indeed. Is there any way to save the new layout?

Cheers,

[acknak]

The layout is saved along with the presentation.

If you'd like to use the custom layout with other presentations, you can save the file as a template (File > Templates > Save), then use that to create new presentations (File > New > Templates and Documents).

If you set that template as the default template, then it will be used automatically whenever you create a new presentation.

[Nabukadnetsar]

Thanks acknak. A niggly little problem solved.

Cheers,

[Phil]

Nabukadnetsar, in this case please add "[Solved]" at the beginning of your first post title (by using the edit button).

Thanks!
phil

[vincent.keunen]

Great post. I can see how to "re-arrange" items, add new ones... But what about the "slide box" (the rectangle where the slide will appear) in the handouts page. It can be moved but not resized... Did I miss something? Thanks for any complement of information.

Vincent

[acknak]

Have you read the Forum Survival Guide?

We encourage everyone to try a search before posting. Entering "handout size" in the search box (upper right) located two relevant threads, including this one: [Solved] Printing multiple slides on one page (see the last message there).

It's ok if you tried a search and didn't find anything; it's just a good idea to at least try a search first.

Also note that OOo 3 (final release in a few days) now includes the popular "Powerpoint-style" handout layout, so you may not need to tweak the layout at all.