Page size "sticks", was A4, part stays A4.

[mathog]

In a software package from Europe the .doc file has a default page size of A4. Opened it with OpenOffice 2.1 on Mandriva 2006 and did:

format -> page -> page tab -> format (A4 -> Letter)
file -> print -> properties -> paper tab -> paper size (A4 to Letter).

But when I try to print the printer (Genicom ML260 with real Adobe Postscript) flashes a request to load A4 paper!

I finally printed the first 4 pages (duplex) to a file and then poked around in the postscript, here's the most relevant finding:

% grep PageSize /tmp/foo.ps
%%BeginFeature: *PageSize Letter
<</PageSize [612 792]>> setpagedevice
%%BeginFeature: *PageSize A4
<</PageSize [595 842]>> setpagedevice

That is, the postscript generated contains BOTH page sizes. I don't see why. Scanning up and down through the entire document and checking page size shows letter everywhere. The default template is probably A4 though. I use this version of OO all the time with documents that started out as letter, and stayed letter, and they print normally.

I tried "select all" and then going through the page size changes described above, but it made no difference.

I also tried changing

file -> print -> properties -> device tab, postscript level (from driver -> 1)

and then printed to a file. That eliminated the PageSize sections of the postscript. However when I printed that file (from the .ps) it did not print correctly (no duplex).

Changing the level from 1 to 2 reintroduced the original behavior.

Any ideas? I just want to print this manual on letter paper!

Thanks,

David Mathog

[acknak]

Any luck with this?

Your best approach may be to leave the document as A4 and scale it when you print to fit on letter paper.

I say this because I suspect the problem comes out of the .doc file format. OOo is developed to reverse-engineer the .doc format produced by MS Office. Files generated by other apps will probably have many glitches when opened by OOo.

[BillP]

Do all pages use the same page style? Edit > Select All followed by Page > Format > (A4 > Letter) just changes the page size in the page style of the last page. If any other pages have a different page style, they won't be changed.