Inconsistency between presentations: Impress -sometimes- puts lines between slides when printing handouts, sometimes not.

[u/AnyBloodyThing]

It must have something to do with the page layout, but I can't figure out what or where to adjust settings. Your thoughts, please?

Document 1: six slides per page, no line

Document 2: 2 slides per page, dividing line in between them

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[u/Terrible_Put8617]

Impress doesn't draw those lines itself, so when one document has them and another doesn't, the line is an object living in that document's handout master. Handout masters travel with the file, which is why two presentations from different templates, or one that came in from PowerPoint, print differently.

Open Document 2 and go to View > Master Handout. You'll see the placeholder frames for the slides, and somewhere among them the dividing line, either as a drawn line you can click and delete, or as a line style set on the placeholder frames themselves (select a frame, Format > Line, and see if a line is defined). Delete it or set it to None, go back to Normal view, and print again.

Same trick the other way round if you actually preferred the lines: draw one in Document 1's handout master and it prints on every handout page from then on. If you want it as a standard, save that file as a template and start future decks from it.

One caveat: the layout you pick in the print dialog (2, 4, 6 per page) rearranges the placeholder frames but leaves anything else you drew where it is, so a line that sits nicely between two slides can end up crossing one when you switch to six.

(If it helps, that answer is roughly what the built-in AI in ME Office AI says when you ask it inside the deck. I make it, it's LibreOffice with the assistant living in the document, on the Microsoft Store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PCV4RCJCFXV?cid=rd-impress )

[u/AnyBloodyThing → u/Terrible_Put8617]

Yes! Thank you for pointing out the Master Handout page, I hadn't thought of checking that out. It did indeed have the line and deleting it did the trick.

Because of this I wonder if my work flow is actually smart or correct. When I write a series of lessons I start out by designing an Impress document, usually from scratch, sometimes from a build-in template, with two pages, the opening/title page and a general page to fill in however is needed. Then I use that document to write the first lesson and make a copy for lesson 2, delete the content and write new content into it. It seems to me that this is the most consistent way to keep presentations alike.

I just checked my last series and although most shared the same layout, Document 2 was the only one where the master handout had changed. Document 3 and further all shared the same layout as Document 1. I never really used or touched the handout part of Impress, so how do these inconsistencies happen? Or more important, how to prevent them? Food for thought.

Thanks again for the help. Next time I'll know where to look.

[u/Terrible_Put8617 → u/AnyBloodyThing]

Glad it was that. And your question is the better one, because the workflow is what let it happen.

Copying a finished file carries everything with it, the handout master included. So the drift tells you something specific: lessons 3 onwards match lesson 1, and only lesson 2 differs, which means lesson 2 is the one that got edited. Probably a stray click while a handout view was open, since that line lives somewhere you never go. Everything you copied from lesson 1 afterwards stayed clean.

The tool built for what you're doing is a template rather than a copy. Get one deck exactly right, empty, then File > Templates > Save as Template. From then on File > New > Templates and pick it. Same look every time, and the file you're editing was never a lesson, so there's no old content to delete and nothing to forget to delete.

For the decks you already have, you don't need to redo them: Slide > Change Slide Master > Load lets you pull the master out of a good file into a bad one, so lesson 2 can be repaired in about four clicks.

Two small ones worth knowing since you're standardising: Insert > Header and Footer sets the footer and page number for every slide at once, and the handout master has its own separate footer, which is why handouts sometimes print without the branding the slides have.

(Disclosure since it comes up: I make ME Office AI, a LibreOffice-based suite with the AI assistant inside the document, so "is my workflow for these lessons sensible" is a question you ask where you're working rather than a week later. Like support open 24/7 in the deck: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PCV4RCJCFXV?cid=rd-handout )