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I'm in the US so a page is 8.5 inches by 11 inches ie. letter size orientation PORTRAIT

Whether it is an existing Writer document or a simple document of a few lines, it looks portrait oriented but when printed to a physical printer, it comes out in landscape orientation. Also a simple calc spreadsheet does the same thing.

Libreoffice as it comes with Ubuntu 23.10 or before (in my case that would be Ubuntu 22.04) - does not have the problem.

My printers are Canon iX6820, which are able to take paper up to about tabloid size - which is larger than the typical letter or legal size.

I'm hearing other large format printers, such as Epson Stylus Pro 3880 have a similar issue.

quill
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  • Do you know if any bug has been reported in the libreoffice bugtracker? – Archisman Panigrahi Sep 02 '24 at 22:04
  • @Archisman Panigrahi - The bug has been registered with libreoffice support - bug 154975. I'll plan to add how to install an alternate version of LO. It's not a flatpack thing. It involves getting the appropriate tar file expanded, running something that processes a whole bunch of .deb files, moving the resulting directory structure, changing ownership of the result if root level modification protection is appropriate (like everything else related to /usr/bin) then slipping in revised symbolic links for /usr/bin/libreoffice and /usr/bin/soffice. – quill Sep 02 '24 at 23:42

1 Answers1

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Simplest workaround: Export to PDF, and print with your PDF reader (Evince/Okular).

The issue has been reported to LibreOffice bugtracker. The rest of the answer is about installing an older version of LibreOffice where this regression was absent.

This is do to a problem introduced to Libreoffice around September 22, 2022 in an attempt to fix an issue with documents that have some some pages formatted portrait while others are formatted landscape. Now if the page length can be printed as width on that printer, LO twists the layout sideways. This explains why the problem does not appear in many printers and, why the problem does not appear when these large format printers are actually using their larger paper size (tabloid).

Ubuntu 24.04 has picked up a version of Libreoffice since the problem was created (9/22/22). This explains why previous versions of Ubuntu print correctly. Libreoffice has a reported bug on this issue.

To get around this problem:

  1. Install a second version of LibreOffice, selecting something prior to 7.5.0, In my case I selected version 7.4.7.2. I do not remove the version that came with Ubuntu 24.04
  2. Set aside the Ubuntu installed versions by changing two items in /usr/bin - that being to make symbolic links for /usr/bin/libreoffice and /usr/bin/soffice. Those items should now point to the alternate (older) LibreOffice program soffice.

What follows is based on my notes for installing an alternative version of LibreOffice.

To install another version of Libreoffice on Ubuntu follow the procedure found in https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel/Linux . Some comments as you follow that procedure for the purpose of getting around the rotated print specific to this issue:

  • Ignore the comments about old releases as you will almost certainly want a version after 5.2.

  • I use the manual installation instructions.

  • askubuntu.com is specifically about Ubuntu issues and even then, if you're not running at least ubuntu 18.04, well, that's another issue. You'll be using the DEB packages - ignore the others. I followed the x86_64 part. I don't know of Ubuntu 24.04 even has a 32 bit version.

The right package to use will come from https://downloadarchive.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/old/

From that page, select a version. The bug to avoid began around 7.5.0.0 I recommend using 7.4.7.2.

Once that is selected and because this is askubuntu.com - the next correct choice is the deb/ version.

This is downloaded then untared

Continue following the installation instructions.

Once install, the Libreoffice version will be within a directory something like LibreOffice_7.4.7.2. Within that directory find DEBS/install. Within that directory is a directory opt - that is the whole alternate libreoffice application. I copied that directory to a directory within /opt and yes, /opt would be a directory at the root level.

As this is where I placed the alternate LibreOffice, changes were made to /usr/bin

  • The symbolic like at /usr/bin/libreoffice was renamed to /usr/bin/libreofficeU

  • The symbolic like at /usr/bin/soffice was renamed to /usr/bin/sofficeU

  • A symbolic link was created at /usr/bin/libreoffice pointing to the new version. On my system that link now reads
    libreoffice -> /opt/libreoffice74/program/soffice

  • A symbolic link was created at /usr/bin/soffice pointing to the new version. On my system that link now reads soffice -> /opt/libreoffice74/program/soffice

quill
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  • Thank you for creating this post. It will definitely help a lot of users. Can you add mroe details about how to install this older version? Maybe with flatpak or something – Archisman Panigrahi Sep 02 '24 at 22:02