scale a Writer document to print on one page

users
#1

I have a Writer document 22” by 17” (landscape) that I would like to print on one page. How can I scale it to accomplish this?

I am using the latest versions of Mac OS and LibreOffice.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

#2

Hi.
May not be the most elegant way, but use the PDF button to create a PDF and print that to one page.
Steve

#3

Hello,

Also you may have a scale option in your printer driver. But this is vendor dependent. We have this option in Canon drivers for iRC5045, but not for Xerox WorkCenter 5330 (our photocopiers/printers).

The PDF option is 2 steps but universal, as Preview.app will then be able to scale down your document without problems.

Cheers,

Vitorio Delage

Académie nationale de médecine
Gestion du parc informatique

#4

This will depend on your printer. I can't give specific advice regarding Mac
OS as I use Linux but their MAY be a scaling menu in the printer driver.

The scale ratio would be 2:1. 22 x 17 (tabloid) paper is twice the size of 11
x 8.5 (letter) paper. Discrepancies in driver software may require a bit of
experimentation to determine what would fit best.

Tom

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
Is that 22 inches by 17 inches??!!?? That is a huge document! Is it huge
and trying to print to hundreds of pages or does it just "go over" a little
bit and try to print to 4 or less pages? Print Preview is handy for
figuring that out. If it is just a little bit over then simply choosing a
different page-size might do the trick. From the menus;
Format - Page - Page (it's about the 2nd tab in the pop-up)
then the drop-down menu at the very top should say something like
US Letter or
A4
It is probably on "US Letter" and just needs to be changed to "A4". For
some reason computers set-up throughout the rest of the world (well, at
least quite a few places but NOT everywhere) are all set to the "US
Letter" despite that size paper only being available in the US (and maybe
Canada but not many other places). The entire rest of the world (ok, again
probably not absolutely everywhere) have agreed to standardise on A4 and
metric systems.

A4 is roughly 12" by 8" (more precisely it's 11.69" by 8.27") = or in
metric systems that is 29.7cm by 21cm
A3 is roughly 18" by 12"
and LibreOffice doesn't easily let me go to A2 or larger unless i could
create my own customised size that large.

Recently i had to shrink an A4 down to A5 and stumbled around a bit.
Eventually copying it all into Draw and then selecting everything on the
page allowed me to grab the green corner and resize everything. Using the
Shift key when resizing makes the aspect-ratio stay the same so the text
and images don't get warped.

This worked really well with all the various images in my poster but i
think i had done something wrong with my text-frames in Writer as i then
had to select each line of text, right-click and choose "Size and position"
(or something) and then untick the 2 boxes that force the text to stay the
same absolute size and then tick the box that let them change size
according to the size of the frame they were in. Luckily i only had 27
lines to do so it was fairly quick but i've been meaning to write in to
find out what i had done wrong, or rather to find out how to do the right
thing in the first place to make text-frames resize properly.

Regards form
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

/snip/

22x17 is what we call in the US B-size. 8½x11 is A-size, and B-size is
just twice that. C-size is twice B-size, and so on up thru E-size, then the
system is modified.

Probably the output is meant for a printer that can print B-size. Or
a plotter.

--doug

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahh, that does make sense then! Good to hear. It's a bit of a shame we
haven't heard back from the "original poster", Truett Bobo, so we still
don't know if he has solved the problem or not. The first 2 answers both
had good ways of handling the problem, mine might have worked (maybe). I
think just treat this one as solved in the absence of any feedback to the
contrary. Hopefully the problem really has been solved and there are other
questions out-standing.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hello:

I’ve been spending time with a daughter who is visiting for a week, and am just now getting back to my question about printing a document 22” by 17”. The document I am interested in printing is a single page, twice letter size in both directions. The area I wish to print is the entire area, with only ¼ inch margins. It has many individual text boxes and would be very time consuming to reduce font sizes for all.

I was hoping to print it directly from the LibreOffice Writer document, but since that does not appear to be a possibility, I am content to save it as a PDF document and print that. So yes, you can consider this matter resolved.

Thanks for the helpful responses.

Truett Bobo

#9

Hi :slight_smile:
Oops, sorry! Err, have you tried printing from the
File - Print
menu? That should give a pop-up box allowing you to select printer etc.
In there or using the button there to go into the printer properties it
might allow you to "fit to page"
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#10

That is the easiest way I have found as well. Even though I have a printer that outputs to 13 by 19 inches [Super B], it is cheaper to print it out in Letter size

#11

I do not know of any printer that is not a high end commercial printing company device that can print 22x17 inches, unless you have a 17 inch wide plotter at home or in your office. The costs of buying and maintaining such a printer is something most people cannot afford. If you do not run 100's or 1000's of these sheets a year, then it would be cheaper to go to your nearest sign/banner printing company. Of course there are some companies that will take your order and ship in to you. Staples Office supply stores have options [delivery only] that are larger than the needed 22x17 inches, but it can always be cut down to the actual size.

BUT, that does not help the "test printing" of the poster/banner/etc. for the original post. I find that owning a low cost HP wide format printer helps. It goes up to 13x19 inches [you can get photo paper this size]. Then you have some better options for printing larger posters scaled down to the largest paper you have. So I print/export to a PDF file and then use printer's scaling options. Sometimes, depending on the document type, to create a high quality JPG file and scale it through a package's [GIMP] printing options.

As for your description of A-size - - - 8.5 x 11 inches is not an A size that I have heard of. It is US Letter. I have never seen any reference that US Letter described as "A" size. The closest is A4, but A4 is a little narrower and a little taller.

B is 11x17 inches - also called Tabloid.
Super B is 13x19 inches

JB4 - 257x364 mm
B5 - 176x250 mm
JB5 - 182x257 mm

A6 - 105x148 mm
A5 - 148x210
A4 - 210x297
A3 - 297x420
A3+ - 330x483 mm

These sizes are according to my HP Officejet 7000 wide format printer. Since it does not print larger than Super B, I do not know the actual inches for C or E sizes. [except C6 "Envelope" - 114x162 mm]

#12

If you need to print out a final size image of 22x17 inches, and you do not have such a printer, then you will need to find out if your printer has a "Tile" option. That will print a large poster/banner/etc. in multiple sheets of paper. Then you just trim the excess and fit them together like you are tiling a floor or wall, but with no space between tiles. Sometimes you can print a "borderless tile" if your printer will do this, and then you will not need to do as much trimming.

It really depends on which OS [and printer drivers] you use and what your printer can do. My Ubuntu based OSs are more limited for printer options than the Windows 7 has available to use. Scaling and tiling is just some of the options that are not available in Linux but available using Windows with the same printer.

#13

Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote:

As for your description of A-size - - - 8.5 x 11 inches is not an A
size that I have heard of. It is US Letter. I have never seen any
reference that US Letter described as "A" size. The closest is A4, but
A4 is a little narrower and a little taller.

B is 11x17 inches - also called Tabloid.
Super B is 13x19 inches

JB4 - 257x364 mm
B5 - 176x250 mm
JB5 - 182x257 mm

A6 - 105x148 mm
A5 - 148x210
A4 - 210x297
A3 - 297x420
A3+ - 330x483 mm

These sizes are according to my HP Officejet 7000 wide format printer.
Since it does not print larger than Super B, I do not know the actual
inches for C or E sizes. [except C6 "Envelope" - 114x162 mm]

http://www.papersizes.org/ is quite handy for looking up paper sizes. It also explains how the ISO (A4 etc.) sizes are actually defined - e.g. A0 has an area of 1 square metre, and aspect ratio of 1:sqrt(2) (which gives it the property that cutting a page in half along it's long edge results in a smaller page of the same aspect ratio), then each subsequent A-series size is derived by cutting the previous size in half.

The US ANSI A, B, C, D and E sizes are not related to the ISO A-, B- and C-series sizes. So ANSI A is nothing to do with ISO A4 (although it happens to be very roughly the same size), and ANSI C nothing to do with ISO C6.

Mark.

#14

The ISO-269 standard specifies the following:

Format A B C
Size mm × mm in × in mm × mm in × in mm × mm in × in
0 841 × 1189 33.1 × 46.8 1000 × 1414 39.4 × 55.7 917 × 1297 36.1 × 51.1
1 594 × 841 23.4 × 33.1 707 × 1000 27.8 × 39.4 648 × 917 25.5 × 36.1
2 420 × 594 16.5 × 23.4 500 × 707 19.7 × 27.8 458 × 648 18.0 × 25.5
3 297 × 420 11.7 × 16.5 353 × 500 13.9 × 19.7 324 × 458 12.8 × 18.0
4 210 × 297 8.27 × 11.7 250 × 353 9.84 × 13.9 229 × 324 9.02 × 12.8
5 148 × 210 5.83 × 8.27 176 × 250 6.93 × 9.84 162 × 229 6.38 × 9.02
6 105 × 148 4.13 × 5.83 125 × 176 4.92 × 6.93 114 × 162 4.49 × 6.38
7 74 × 105 2.91 × 4.13 88 × 125 3.46 × 4.92 81 × 114 3.19 × 4.49
8 52 × 74 2.05 × 2.91 62 × 88 2.44 × 3.46 57 × 81 2.24 × 3.19
9 37 × 52 1.46 × 2.05 44 × 62 1.73 × 2.44 40 × 57 1.57 × 2.24
10 26 × 37 1.02 × 1.46 31 × 44 1.22 × 1.73 28 × 40 1.10 × 1.57

All aspect ratios are 1: root2 (dividing A4 en 2 pieces gives A5)
The B sizes are the geometric mean between the A sizes (this means that enlargement from A4 to B4 is the same enlargement as B4 to A3)
The same counts for the C sizes.
C-sizes re used for envelopes where an A4 letter fits in a C4 envelope, of if folded once over the long side it fits in a C5 envelope.

Only in the US, Canada and Mexico different sizes are used:

Size Width x Height Width x Height) Aspect Ratio
Letter 216 x 279 mm 8.5 x 11.0 in 1:1.2941
Legal 216 x 356 mm 8.5 x 14.0 in 1:1.6471
Junior Legal 127 x 203 mm 5.0 x 8.0 in 1:1.6000
Ledger/Tabloid 279 x 432 mm 11.0 x 17.0 in 1:1.5455

There are ANSI standards size A through E where each next size doubles the short smaller side, staring at size A (which is letter).
So US B size is 11 x 17 in.

Theres id a nice overview on wiki to be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

Rob.

#15

Thanks, I will look at the site.

#16

Hi :slight_smile:
Glad to hear that the Pdf work-around did solve the problem.
Congrats and regards from
Tom :slight_smile: