Printing a text file in an efficient (small) manner.

September 22, 2010 3:24 PM

I'd like to print this text file. Since it's not exactly great literature, I'd like to save paper.

How could I print it, on, say, two columns, with a small font, while still maintaining some readability? I have a Brother laser printer and some letter paper (8.5" x 11"). I'm using Windows 7. Bonus points for a nice way to bind the result so that it is compact and easy to consult.

posted by Monday, stony Monday to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, [open MS Word or similar], Ctrl+V, Ctrl+A, Format>Columns>Two>OK, File>Page Setup>Landscape.

Alternatively, your printer probably has a print multiple pages on the same page function that will allow you to determine page progression for easy binding. File>Print>Properties, then play around.
posted by phunniemee at 3:46 PM on September 22, 2010

I know this is a totally obnoxious thing to say (and probably won't solve your problem), but I really like viewing game FAQs like this on an iPad or laptop while I'm playing. It sucks to switch out on the computer you're actually playing on, but I find it's really effective and handy to have it on a nearby device. It's easy to scroll through tons of pages and you can easily search for key terms. This is a $500 solution to a really simple problem, but in case you have one around (or were pondering a purchase) and just didn't think of it for this, I thought I'd mention it.

(not ipad-ist, ipad-blue, etc etc)
posted by heresiarch at 3:58 PM on September 22, 2010

Make sure you make all margins on the paper as small as your printer will allow (just set them all to 0 and Word should give you an error and automatically set it as low as possible).
posted by Hargrimm at 4:12 PM on September 22, 2010

@heresiarch: Or $139 if you count the Kindle. This file could be dragged straight on to that and it'd look reasonable since it's just text.
posted by wackybrit at 4:46 PM on September 22, 2010

Response by poster: Herm, it would be much easier if I could replace the single linebreaks with spaces, so that the paragraphs would look good once I'm in two-column mode -- I know how to do it in Word, but I only have OpenOffice on this computer. Does anyone know how I would go about it?
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 4:55 PM on September 22, 2010

Do you have any text editors that can do regular expressions?
posted by zixyer at 5:02 PM on September 22, 2010

Wait, just found out how to do it in OpenOffice - paste the text in and do Format > Default Formatting.

Look in the help index under "line breaks > removing" for more details.
posted by zixyer at 5:11 PM on September 22, 2010

Whoops, I messed up those instructions. I'll just paste from the help this time.

1. Choose Tools - AutoCorrect Options .
2. On the Options tab, ensure that Combine single line paragraphs if length greater than 50% is selected. To change the minimum percentage for the line length, double-click the option in the list, and then enter a new percentage.
3. Click OK.
4. Select the text containing the line breaks that you want to remove.
5. In the Apply Style box on the Formatting bar, choose “Default”.
6. Choose Format - AutoCorrect - Apply.

posted by zixyer at 5:17 PM on September 22, 2010

I don't know for sure that it'll do columns like you want, but the version of WordPad included with Windows 7 is much more Word like than it used to be - quite a remarkable make over.
posted by dirm at 3:25 AM on September 23, 2010

Best answer: Print it "2-up" and then (optionally) print to both sides of the paper. That way you get four 'pages' per sheet of paper. Then set it to "Long Edge Binding", so that you can three-hole punch the pages, put them in a three-ring binder, and flip through them in landscape orientation.

I do this all the time for programming documentation.
posted by Wild_Eep at 7:30 AM on September 23, 2010