Libre Office Problem

I’ve been working on a document for a client, and it’s laid out in book format. Each chapter has its own page style (to maintain chapter title in headers) and there are several other styles as well. I’ve been printing it double sided, two pages per side. Today, when I tried to print it, instead of US Letter (which is what I set up all of the styles to be in) it insists on printing in a #8 Monarch Envelope format, which totally screws things up. But there’s no way to change it; the format is greyed out. The default for the printer is US Letter, the page styles are US Letter, but for some reason Office has decided that it’s only going to allow me to print it as an envelope, in this file, and this file only. I can’t find anything in either the Help for the software or by Googling anyone else who has had a problem like this. Is there a Libre Office doctor in the house?

16 thoughts on “Libre Office Problem”

  1. Have you tried to print to file as a pdf? If that works, you might be able to print the pdf. In Ubuntu, this shows up in the Options tab for the printer (print to file). You can select output as pdf. I don’t know if you have this option in your Fedora/Red Hat setup.

  2. Yeah I was going to suggest that as well (print as pdf). Or try changing the format to single page per side if possible and then back again to see if that straightens things out. Otherwise I’m just guessing…

    But in reality, to save time, just post an email with your question here:

    users@global.libreoffice.org

    1. Be sure to include all the vital details in your email. Like the version of LibreOffice you are using as well as the flavor and version of Linux you are using.

    1. Yeah good idea. IRC first but if of no avail, email may catch an eye of someone in a different timezone….

  3. I had a similar problem once. The solution was to go to the Print Options dialogue, and choose “Use only paper size from printer preferences.”

    See https://www.ryananddebi.com/2016/02/02/linux-libreoffice-print-dialog-orientation-greyed-out/

    Another source suggested it was a CUPS problem (if you are using linux). If you have the option of using a different printer driver, you might try that. I know that for my printer, I have three options, a postscript driver, a CUPS driver, and a “hpijs” driver (whatever that is).

  4. What about select-all, copy, paste into a new document which might let you print correctly?

    1. No, that loses all of my dozens of custom pages. I ended up going back to an older version of the document that worked, and copying individual chapters back in.

  5. You are very lucky. Libre Office often freezes my computer. I use it only for simple things, which I compile in Windows Office to assemble.

  6. I don’t like the menu structure of Libre Office. You can lock too many things and not be able to find a way to unlock them.

    Menus are suppose to simplify rather than complicate, otherwise just provide a command box. It is an art that few get right. Even with a command option you still need to choose keywords well.

    Depth vs. width. Only one leaf per command or multiples? It certainly is an art, but getting it right is so satisfying, I like creating user defined buttons. I’ve got a universal interface I once wrote with a tree and user defined buttons… no menu at all. It worked really well except for getting the button pictures right (I don’t do graphics well.)

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