Printing A5 Booklets The Easy Way

It is said often that the best things in life are free and this is
certainly true when it comes to printing out A5 booklets on A4
paper. I am writing this article, not in any version of Microsoft
Word, but in OpenOffice Writer, the word-processing element
of OpenOffice. OpenOffice is an Office suite, rather like
Microsoft's, with the added advantages of being free and totally
compatible with all versions of Microsoft Office. It comes
with its own word-processor, spreadsheet, and presentation
programs that both load and save files in Microsoft Word,
Excel, and Powerpoint formats. OpenOffice is an example of
what is known as 'open source' software.

Another bonus, but one that is unlikely to benefit many readers,

is that OpenOffice is available for a variety of different
computers and systems though most users will probably be
installing it on some version of Windows. It will work on any
version of Windows, from '95' to 'XP', which is more than can
be said for the various different versions of Microsoft Office
available.

You can download OpenOffice from the official website

www.openoffice.org or, if you have a blank CD you can
ask me for a copy, since being open source software I can pass
on a copy free of charge. If you decide to download a copy the
file size is around 51 Mbytes, although it regularly appears on
the cover discs provided with many serious computing
magazines such as PC Plus, PC Advisor e.t.c..

Installation
If you are using Windows 95, 98 or ME then installing the
software is easy. Open Explorer and click on the folder where
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the installation files are then double-click the setup.exe (or
setup if you can't see any file extension) icon and follow the
instructions.

If you are using Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP

then you could feasibly install the software using the method
above, but there is a better method which will give each user of
your computer the ability to customise OpenOffice to their
particular wishes. To install using this method you will have to
log on as Administrator, then open a command window, go to
the folder containing the installation files and type
setup -net which will run the set-up program for a
'network' installation. After doing this then you should run the
setup.exe program in the newly installed folder for each user.

On my main computer I use OpenOffice with Windows ME,

XP and Linux since it gives me the ability to create word
documents in whatever system I happen to have booted to. It
also means that if a particular operating system (usually
Microsoft's) goes awry then I can always switch to an
alternative and still have access to my files.

Once installed you will find an OpenOffice folder in your "start

menu" containing separate shortcuts for each Office
application. The word-processing element is known as
“Writer”.

Page set-up for booklets

We're going to be creating an A5 booklet for printing on A4
landscape paper so first we need to set-up the page in Writer.
The page set-up in Writer can be found in the menu under
Format and Page. Selecting this brings up a dialogue window
from which we need to select the second tab from the left,
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titled Page as seen in Illustration 1.

In the drop-down list next to Format select the A5 paper size,

and under Page Layout select “Right and Left”.

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 Illustration 1: page set-up dialogue window

You can now press the OK button and start typing your master
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piece.

Printing your booklet

Now we get to the juice – printing your A5 pages onto A4
sheets as a booklet.

To print you should select Print from the File menu which will
bring up the Print dialogue. The first step for printing an A5
booklet is to press the “Properties” button next to the selected
printer to open your specific printers options. Here
everybody's dialogue window will look slightly different
depending on the make and model of the printer but whatever it
looks like you need to select the paper size as A4 and the
orientation as Landscape then press the OK button to return to
the Print dialogue window.

Next you should press the 'Options' button which will reveal
the dialogue window shown in Illustration 2.

To enable the booklet printing you should select the option

“brochure”. Now comes the tricky part! What you select here
depends on what you're printing to.

If you have a printer with an automatic duplex option, i.e. it is

able to print on both sides of the paper automatically, or you're
printing to Adobe Distiller or other PDF writer, then you
should have the options for “Left Pages” and “Right Pages”
both selected. Now simply press the OK button to return to the
normal Print dialogue.

Otherwise if you're printing to a normal ink-jet printer where

you have to turn the pages over yourself then you should, for
the first pass, uncheck the option “Left Pages” but leave the
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option for “Right Pages” left on: this will print out the front
pages at the first pass. To print out the remaining pages you
need to turn the printed pages over and repeat the process but
with the “Left Pages” left on and “Right Pages” turned off.

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Illustration 2: printer options dialogue window

If you don't have an automatic duplex printer then it may be

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best at first to use a PDF printer driver output to experiment as
you get comfortable with this technique. The Help file
provided with OpenOffice is excellent though and should
answer any queries.

© James Head, December 2004.

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