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Last week I wrote about the Open Office 3.0 note feature. If you have students submit papers electronically – OpenOffice 3.0 is a big improvement – because you can type notes and comments that appear in colored bubbles in the margins.

The problem is that in OpenOffice 3.0 these comment bubbles appear outside the printable margin. You cannot print a copy of the paper with your comments in the format that you see on the screen. In MS Office, you can.

Students can view the comments in the neat format on their computers – so it’s not a complete loss. But if you or your students ever wanted to print the paper out in the neat format (from OpenOffice) – there is no option to do that.

I figured out a simple way around this.

In Windows, Mac, and even Ubuntu(Linux) you simply need to download the MS Word Viewer. Open the file that you edit in OpenOffice in MS Word Viewer and you’ll get a file with the comments displayed in pretty bubbles that are inside the printable margin.

To do this in Ubuntu you’ll need to install the MS Word Viewer in Wine. It’s easy.

Ubuntu Users

  1. Install Wine (if you haven’t already)
    If you are using Ubuntu, you can now install Wine by
    clicking this link
    . Alternatively, you can install by going to
    Applications->Add/Remove and searching for Wine.
  2. Download the MS Word Viewer file for Windows.
  3. Right-click on the execute file
  4. Select “Open with Wine Windows Program Manager”

The Application should install. Now when you type comments in OpenOffice. You can re-open the saved file in you MS Word Viewer and the comments appear in the margins. You can print the paper, and the comments show up in the margins.

11 Responses to “OpenOffice 3.0 Notes Feature – Printing Notes”

  1. Ian

    You can print a screenshot. This gives output that looks identical to the screen. I prefer OOo way of showing deletions and changes to that in Word, so for me this is preferable. However, it is a bit of a hassle to have to do this for each page. An option to print markup as is Word would be preferable.
    I run Wordview.exe in Win4LinPro which is a WinXP (etc) emulator which is very easy to use. So I use this for printing markup as well. It is very easy to use.

  2. Ralph Kennedy

    Andrew, thanks for this suggestion, which I’ve just tried successfully. Your site is becoming a great resource!

  3. Andrew Cullison

    Ralph,

    Thanks! I’m glad you found this helpful.

  4. Mateusz

    Hi,

    OO 3.1. has a needed feature. Just enter into print options and check one of options of printing notes.

    Regards

    Mateusz

  5. Neil

    Mateusz, that feature doesn’t allow printing in the Margins it prints all the notes afterwards. That isn’t nearly as useful.

  6. Martin

    My normal (and working) Ubuntu (CUPS) printer showed up, put when I tried to print I got an error. Anyone experienced such problems?

  7. Andrew Cullison

    Martin,

    I haven’t had this problem. Are you having it just when you try to print Open Office Notes, or is it a system wide thing?

  8. Martin

    It’s when printing from within Wine. Except that, printing works fine. To me it seems there is a problem with Wine cups connection problem, but I have no clue what causes the problem. Can it be a “rights” issue?

  9. Harri

    Mateusz (and other),

    the notes printing is in many cases useless, as the context of the note is lost. Page number is not nearly enough to identify the place where the comment was. What is needed, is either a marker in the text or some context with the note, to mark the exact location of the note.

  10. Andrew Cullison

    Mateusz,

    The above post acknowledges this uselessness, and explains how users can work around it to get precisely the results you desire using a free MS Word Viewer.

  11. Laurence

    Thanks very much for this tip. As a teacher constantly marking long papers, this problem has bothered me for some time. I had despaired of a solution.

    You write:
    “In Windows, Mac, and even Ubuntu(Linux) you simply need to download the MS Word Viewer.”

    I’m on a Mac. Do I take it that you mean I must run the MS Word Viewer on Windows running on my Mac? For the life of me, I can’t find a made-for-Mac version of the Word Viewer. Am I misunderstanding/not looking carefully enough?

    Thanks again.

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