OpenOffice tip: Everything about envelopes

Envelope printing is the tax return of office suite tasks. Everyone has to do it, and everyone hates it.

Printing envelopes in OpenOffice.org, or in any office suite, is complicated because of printers. When you take printers out of their comfort space of letter or A4 size paper, they get cranky. Well, not cranky; they just have different rules for how they print, and it's not always obvious what those are.

Here's my best take on how to print envelopes successfully. This step-by-step guide is for OpenOffice.org on Windows. It should work the same way on Linux and a Mac.

I'm going to talk about getting started, set some expectations, mention some setup steps and then go through the procedures.

You will need to fiddle with your printer a bit to find out where it likes envelopes to come through -- left or right, portrait or landscape, tray preferences, etc. You can do this with OpenOffice.org, another program or both. Keep printing your envelope document, inserting it in different locations and orientations.

My printer, for instance, will print in positions A and B but not C. It's just like that. You'll need to try it with envelopes or envelope-sized and -shaped pieces of paper. Consider folding a regular piece of paper in thirds, as you would to fit it in an envelope.

If you send your printer an envelope and it's all set up to print on letter or A4 sized paper, it will get confused. Best case, the printer will feed through without printing and claim that you're out of paper. So you'll need to specify that envelopes will be the paper to print on. In case your printer settings don't stick very well, as with my printer, you can just change it in the Control Panel. Go to your Control Panel, find the printers, find your printer, then right-click and choose Printing Preferences. Select the envelope size you're using as the paper size, then click O

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If you want to print your return address on envelopes, type it up in the user data window and OpenOffice.org will suck it in when you use the standard envelope function. Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > User Data. You can overwrite this information later, but it's handy to have it as an option.

Here are the three important things about printing envelopes. Then I'll get into the step-by-step action.

The rubber is about to hit the road. There are two ways to create the envelope document, and two ways to get the data in there. Use the one you like best and suits the data you're working with.

We finish up with what to do next time you want to print envelopes, so you don't need to go through all this rigmarole again.

You can print one or several envelopes with data you just type in, or you can suck the data in from a database. They're similar, but, of course, somewhat different. This section just covers plain envelopes where you type in the data.

Here's a simple approach to creating the envelope document with typed data. You don't need the official "envelope" function at all. Also, if you want to just download an envelope, I created the following procedure.

The envelope should come out exactly the way you want it. If not, see the "Getting started: Making your printer like envelopes" section again, and insert envelopes in different locations and orientations.

Here's the standard approach to creating the envelope. In this approach, we use the official Envelope Feature of OpenOffice.org. Also, if you want to just download an envelope, I created a procedure, click here.

The envelope should come out exactly the way you want it. If not, see "Getting started: Making your printer like envelopes" above, and insert envelopes in different locations and orientations.

If you've got 30 people listed in a database, it's easier to bring the data in from there than to type each address. We're not going to go through creating databases; let's assume it's already set up.

Let's walk through the simple approach to creating the envelope document with database data. First, create the envelope document as in steps one through four of the simple approach procedure above in "Simple approach: Envelopes with data you type in." Also add your return address information if necessary.

The envelope should come out exactly the way you want it. If not, go back to and insert envelopes in different locations and orientations.

There's a rich tapestry of options. Here's the final one. Then we talk about a couple of ways you can reuse the envelope document to make this less work the second time.

You're going to do things very similarly to the standard approach process I just described.

Do steps one and two. However, instead of step three, which is typing or pasting the data into the Addressee field, you're going to do these steps instead.

Now go back to step four of "Standard approach: Creating the envelope document with typed data" and continue through step 10.

Note: Once your document has appeared, if you didn't get the correct carriage returns or spacing between the fields when selecting the fields in the Envelope window, go ahead and do that now.

Instead of printing as in the last three steps of that procedure, 11-13, you're going to do these steps instead.

If you like templates, make the envelope document a template. Open the envelope document, choose File > Templates > Save, name the template Envelope and select a category. Click OK.

Then when you want to create an envelope, choose File > New > Templates and Documents, select the category and double-click the envelope template.

Solveig Haugland has worked as an instructor, course developer, author and technical writer in the high-tech industry for 15 years, for employers including Microsoft Great Plains, Sun Microsystems,and BEA. Currently, Solveig is a StarOffice and OpenOffice.org instructor, author, and freelance technical writer. She is also co-author, with Floyd Jones, of three books: Staroffice 5.2 Companion, Staroffice 6.0 Office Suite Companion and OpenOffice.Org 1.0 Resource Kit, published by Prentice Hall PTR. Her fourth book, on OpenOffice.org 2.0, is coming this summer. For more tips on working in OpenOffice, visit Solveig's OpenOffice blog.

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