[ale] 800 pages later

[Brian Pitts]

Greg Freemyer wrote:
> Using "openoffice - calc" I just edited a spreadsheet I use about once
> a month.  Always from Excel in the past.
> 
> When I printed it from calc, I started a 842 pages print job.  (killed
> it after 40 pages or so.)
> 
> Only the first page was relevant and in Excel there is a print range
> defined that limits the printing.
> 
> So 2 questions:
> 1) Is there a way to get calc to honor Excel's print range selection?
> 
> 2) Is there a way to get calc to create its own print range selection?
>  Since multiple people access the doc, it needs to stay a excel
> compatible, but possibly an alternate storage format?
> 
> Thanks
> Greg

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000132

Printing in OpenOffice.org Calc, Part 2: Print selection and printer options
By Bruce Byfield on Sun, 2006-11-26 18:13.

In part 1 of this entry, I discussed how to use Calc's page styles to 
control how spreadsheets print. However, although page styles are one of 
the most useful tools for the task, they are far from the only ones. How 
you setup pages for printing and the printer or export options are also 
part of the arsenal. None of these tools is useful on every occasion, 
and you may have to mix and match them to get the results you want, but, 
the more you know about them, the less of a nightmare printing a 
spreadsheet becomes.


Selecting what to print

When you print from Calc, you have several options for selecting the 
contents: doing nothing, printing a selection, setting up a print range, 
or adding manual row and column breaks. In each of these cases, you may 
want to keep track of the total column width and the number of rows 
likely to be printed on each page. For instance, if you are printing to 
US Letter size page with a portrait orientation and a one inch margin on 
every side, you'll have 6.5 inches for column widths. Assuming that you 
have no outsized cells, with the same paper, you'll have 50-55 rows.

Many people choose the least complicated, and do nothing. The problem 
with this choice, as you can quickly learn if you haven't already, is 
that it is almost never satisfactory without careful calculations of 
width, and, even then, only when the number of rows per page is 
irrelevant. In most other cases, rows and columns are cut off, 
separating information that you want to keep together, and making 
pagination haphazard at best.

A more satisfactory choice is to select what you want by highlighting it 
with a mouse. If necessary, you can use the Format menu to hide cells, 
columns, and rows as you need, or else press the Ctrl key when selecting 
cells to print non-adjacent cells. This method works well for one-time 
printing, but if you want the option of printing the same selection in 
different sessions, use Data > Define Range to create a named range. 
Then, when you want to print, you can either select Data > Select Range 
or else select the named range from the Navigator floating window when 
you press F5.

By contrast, a print range is saved with the file. A print range is 
exactly what it sounds like: a selection of cells that you want to 
print. Print ranges are defined from the Format > Print Ranges sub-menu. 
Use the Define item to create a print range of adjacent cells, and Add 
to select other cells for the print range, including non-adjacent ones, 
and Edit to define the repeating headers on each page -- a touch that 
makes the printout much more usable.

The fourth method, manual page breaks, shares the precision of defining 
a print range. By selecting Insert > Manual Break, and selecting either 
a row or a column break, you have the power to determine exactly where 
you want pages to end and start. The first time, some people may be 
confused by when to choose a row or a column break, but, after the first 
few efforts, they can usually catch on. The major drawback to manual 
page breaks is that, in a long document, they can be laborious and 
time-consuming to insert, and require frequent use of Page Preview to 
keep you on track. The effort is really only worth your while if you 
plan on printing the spreadsheet regularly.

Column and row breaks are marked by blue lines on the right (for a 
column) or the top (for a row) of a line of cells. However, this 
indicator can be easy to miss in a complex spreadsheet -- it might as 
well be as invisible as a print range. Should you be feeling lost, you 
can view both breaks and print ranges by selecting the incompletely 
named View > Page Break Preview. When you are finished, select View > 
Normal to return to the usual display of the sheet.


Selecting printer options

When you select File > Print to print, or File > Export to PDF, you can 
set options for printing. These options are mostly routine, but some 
special considerations apply when you are printing spreadsheets:

     * If you are printing a manual selection or a print range, be sure 
that you choose Print range >Selection or Pages > Selection in the 
Export to PDF window. Otherwise, the print range is overridden, and the 
point of defining one is lost.
     * If you only want to print only some sheets, select them before 
opening the printing or export windows. Press the Ctrl key to make 
multiple selections. When you open the Print window, select Options > 
Sheets > Print Only Selected Sheets to limit what is printed. Note that, 
by default, all sheets in the spreadsheet are printed.
     * Options > Pages > Suppress output of empty pages prevents the 
printing of any page that does not include cell contents or objects. 
Formatting options such as a background graphic or a colored border do 
not count as contents.
     * You may want to change the paper orientation for the printer so 
that no rows or columns are cut off. Use File > Page Preview to decide 
if a change is needed.


Putting it all together

Readying a Calc page for printing or exporting requires 3 steps:

    1. Create and apply page styles to control how printing is done.
    2. Select what to print using the methods described in part 2 of 
this entry.
    3. Set the printer options or the export options.

In many cases, you might want to skip one of these steps. After all, 
spreadsheet printing is hardly an exact science. However, if you include 
all of them, you increase the chance of printing the spreadsheet 
correctly -- if not the first time, then maybe the second and third.

-Brian