[bsoconnor5]

I have a very long document. I want to condense it to as few pages as possible, but I want the page break lines and pages numbers to show as well. (I want to be able to know which page I'm on even though the document has been reduced for printing purposes.)

I have documents like this from other people, but I can't figure out how to print them that way myself. The one I have is 460 pages, but has been condensed onto 90 pages when printed. The page breaks appear when I print and I can see the original page numbers as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[cristobal03]

Hi there, welcome to TSG.

What word processor are you using? I'm assuming Microsoft Word (version number?), but I'd just like to make sure.

chris.

[bsoconnor5]

I am using MS Word 2003. Sorryfor the omission.

[cristobal03]

Originally posted by bsoconnor5:
I have documents like this from other people, but I can't figure out how to print them that way myself. The one I have is 460 pages, but has been condensed onto 90 pages when printed. The page breaks appear when I print and I can see the original page numbers as well.

So your question is how to print, say, 4 quarter-sized pages per page? Zoom is one of Word's print options:

• Click File-->Print... (or press Ctrl+P) to open the Print window.

• In the lower-right-hand corner, there is a frame labeled Zoom. To print multiple pages per sheet, change Pages per sheet to something other than 1.

• Click OK to print your document.

Try this on a selection of, say, 20 pages, just to see if this is what you're after. (To do this, in the Print window, type 1-20 in the field labeled Pages.)

If this isn't what you're after, could you be a bit more specific?

HTH

chris.

[cristobal03]

[bump]

I'm sorry, in my previous post, the text I quoted in red seems to contradict this thread's title; are you asking how to print page breaks and numbers as well?

chris.

[bsoconnor5]

Yes. I'd like to see the page breaks and page numbers on each page.

For example, the first printed page could be:

Paragraph1 ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ...............

Paragraph2................................................................. ........................................................................... ..........................................................
--------------Page1-----------------------------
Paragraph 1.......................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ................

Paragraph2................................................................. ........................................................................... ..........................................................
--------------Page2-----------------------------
Paragraph 1.......................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ................

Paragraph2................................................................. ........................................................................... ..........................................................
--------------Page3-----------------------------



Does think make sense? The first printed page contains the first 3 pages of my report, but the reader can see where each page would end and the page number. Someone with the document could say "go to page 45." even though it may be on the 10th printed page, the reader can still see that it is page 45 of the document.

[cristobal03]

Another question then: this is on standard letter paper (8.5" x 11")? Are the printed pages scaled/zoomed to a percentage of their original size, or does the document employ margins/gutters/what have you to alter the text frame (e.g., 2.25" left-right margins and 2.5" top-bottom margins to make a 4" x 6" typing space)?

Do you only want the original document's page numbers, or would you like pagination for the printout as well?

chris.

[bsoconnor5]

standard paper size of 8 1/2 by 11.

no change to margin.

no change to font size.

secondary page numbers (pages # on each printed page) are not necessary.

essentially, all dead space has been eliminated, but the reader can see where the page would have ended (because the page break line is visible) and the original page numbers are still there as well.

[cristobal03]

And the one they gave you was also printed in Word? I've been looking all morning, and unless it's a printer option, I haven't found any way to do this. You could ask the person who gave you the document how they printed it.

I've mentioned this thread to a moderator, so hopefully Dreamboat (a Word MVP) or another mod will pick it up pretty soon. Also, I've only ever used Word 2000 or prior, so this might be a new feature of later versions.

Post back though, did they print their document in Word? If so, then there must be a way, and I'll keep digging.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

chris.

[bsoconnor5]

I'm not sure which program was used to print it. There's no reason to think it was MS Word, but I figured that since Word is a popular program with many expert users, maybe it could be done in Word as well.

Thanks for your help and efforts. Greatly appreciated!

[cristobal03]

I have an alternative suggestion that would require you to write a macro. You could, using VBA, take all the text on a page, dump it into a string, take out the line-spacing an carriage returns (I'm assuming that's what you meant when you said "dead space"), add something like ============= Page [PAGE] =============, and concatenate that string to a print string, looping through the document until EOF. Once you get through all the pages, you can do whatever you want with the string--open a new document, send it to the printer, what-have-you.

I don't know enough of Word's objects/constants to write that code, but I know it can be done.

chris.

[Anne Troy]

Chris, that's exactly what it would take to my knowledge. The only other thing I can think is that he's seeing normal view instead of page layout view, but you can't print the page breaks.

[cristobal03]

I'm working on some code using the Microsoft Office 2003 language reference, but it's mighty hard because apparently a lot of new objects and collections were added. A Page object, for instance. If I get this done, somebody's going to have to test it.

I'll let you know...

chris.

[cristobal03]

[bump]

Egh. This is really not very easy, coding without a reference. So far this is what I got. Somebody else might want to pick up this one...

'this is a document module, but it'd go in the normal.dot eventually

Option Explicit
Option Compare Binary

Private Sub CollapseDoc()
  Dim objPane As Pane
  Dim objPage As Page
  Dim objRectangle As Rectangle
  Dim objLines As Lines
  Dim objLine As Line
  Dim strPage As String
  Dim strDoc As String
  Dim lngPageCounter As Long
  Const PAGE_BREAK_START = "========================= Page "
  Const PAGE_BREAK_END = " ========================="
  

  Set objPane = ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.ActivePane

  For lngCounter = 1 To UBound(objPane.Pages)
    Set objPage = objPane.Pages.Item(lngCounter)
    For Each objRectangle In objPage.Rectangles
      If objRectangle.RectangleType = wdTextRectangle Then
        Set objLines = objRectangle.Lines
        For Each objLine In objLines
          strPage = strPage & objLine.Range
        Next objLine
      End If
      'the replace character constants below make a big difference:
      'don't want to destroy paragraphs, just "dead space". user's
      'requirement is such that code can't truncate whitespace
      'collectively; must capture one page's text then kill whitespace.
      strPage = Replace(strPage, vbLf, " ") 'make line-feeds a space; they'll wrap.
      strPage = Replace(strPage, vbCr, "") 'manual double-spaces, should be.
    Next objRectangle
    strPage = strPage & vbCr & _
              PAGE_BREAK_START & lngPageCounter & PAGE_BREAK_END & _
              vbCr
    strDoc = strDoc & strPage
  Next lngCounter
  PostCollapsedDoc strDoc
End Sub

Private Function PostCollapsedDoc(ByVal strIn As String)
  'I don't know how to open a new instance of Word and insert
  'the string argument as a new document, so.  Whoever jumps
  'on this would have to pick that up as well.

  Dim oNewDoc As Object

  Set oNewDoc = CreateObject(Word.Application)
End Function

I'd be all over this if I had Word 2003.

Sorry 'bout that. Hopefully this'll be a good reference point, though.

When somebody gets this working, you'll be able to assign the macro to a custom button on your toolbar, and just click that button whenever you want one of these collapsed documents.

chris.

[edit]
Removed .Characters from the line strPage = strPage & objLine.Range; I think it would've thrown a compile error ("argument not optional").
[/edit]

[cristobal03]

[bump2]

Been working on an analog for Word 2000, but it seems as though there's no character code for a page break. I think also (at least this is what it looks like) there's no indication in the file's character string of a page break--I mean, it's looking like Word doesn't put a marker at the page breaks like, say, WordPerfect does.

Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised if WordPerfect offered the type of functionality the OP is after, since a WordPerfect file is really just a single string (more or less).

Anyway, like I said, any Word fan with 2003 who wants to jump on this'n, please feel free. I'm eager to see it done, now.

chris.