PDF Export in OpenOffice.org

Bruce Byfield — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:23:02 +0000

Originally, PDF export in OpenOffice.org was limited to three levels of quality, whose exact differences were obscure to most users. But that was many releases ago. The latest versions of OpenOffice.org provide, for no cost, most of the features available in Acrobat Standard for $299 -- to say nothing of a few features that even Acrobat Pro Extended does not include even at $699. The problem for many people is knowing what options they might want, especially since the wording of the dialog window is sloppy in a couple of places.

For some reason, OpenOffice.org has two Export items listed in the File menu: plain Export and Export to PDF. Which you choose is irrelevant: if you choose PDF as the format in Export, the same PDF Options dialog window opens as when you choose Export to PDF.

The dialog window is divided into five tabs: General, Initial View, User Interface, Links, and Security. Generally, the defaults are reasonable selections, so, if you prefer, the most you have to choose is the range of pages to print. However, the options are worth understanding for those occasions when you need more control over the PDF creation process.

The General Tab

The General tab contains settings that determine the general structure of the PDF document that you are creating.

In the first section of the tab, you set which pages of the original document will be included in the PDF. The default is All, but you can also export the pages currently selected in the original, or designate a range of pages. In setting a range, you can include single page numbers, a range of pages separated by a hyphen (for example, 7-10), or a list of single pages or ranges, with each item separated by a semi-colon (for example, 1; 7-10.

If you want to minimize the size of the PDF file, you can reduce space by your selections in the Image section of the tab. You can reduce the size of JPEG images by selecting an image quality expressed as a percentage, or a general resolution for all images, expressed in dots per inch.

However, be aware that there is a trade off when you reduce image quality. The lower the JPEG setting, the more "noise" that is introduced into the displayed image. If the PDF will be printed by users, then you want a resolution of at least 200dpi, if not 300. If you are not willing to make these trade offs, then use the Lossless setting.

The General tab also contains a number of other unorganized settings. For instance, you can choose whether you want the PDF to include bookmarks, comments (notes), or blank pages from the original.

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