Page printing - margin problems

[Ron Hirsch]

In recent times, there have been some printing problems related to the
borders and white space, when printing out WEB pages.

I normally set the borders to 0.5" all around. In times past, this was fine,
and the complete page would print, with my designated header and footer
within the printable area of the page. Lately, a small part of the right
side of the page would be cut off, and this "cut off" displayed in the Print
Preview window, so it was not due to a printer "problem". So today, I
reduced the L and R margins to 0.3". This seemed to resolve that problem.
But suddenly, the header and footers have now moved out of the printable
area, to the extreme top and bottom of the page. As a result, they don't
appear on the printed output, except for a a "teeny" bit of the text that
crosses over into the printable area.

Changing the top and bottom margins does not have an efffect upon where the
header and footer are located. In a "normal" situation, such as in
WordPerfect, or Word, when the top/bottom margin is changed, the locations
of the header and footer change accordingly, but apparently not in printing
out web pages from XP SP2.

I've searched all over, but cannot find any path to correct this situation.
does such a path exist? The usual "setup" window to control the settings of
the printout does not offer much in the way of options.

I would also like to be able to keep my L and R margins at 0.5", but as I
noted above, that clips off a small amount of the right side of the page
printout. There must be some settings somewhere that will allow me to fix my
current problems.

Can someone point me to them please -

Ron Hirsch

 

[Ron Hirsch]

I neglected to mention that if I put the page margins back to 0.5" all
around, the header and footer move back into the printable area. Why that
happens is a mystery. I did not change the T and B margins when I made the L
& R margins 0.3". Possibly this is related to some scaling factor somwhere.

So I increased all the margins to 1". The header and footer are fine, but
the page now really gets clipped on the right side

Also, a solution is to set the printout to landscape mode - that does not
clip the right side, and allows the header and footer to stay within the
printable area. But I don't want to print a portrait page in landscape mode.

This whole scenario seems a bit bizarre to me.

Ron Hirsch

 

[Jon Kennedy]

Some web pages are coded such that they don't scale correctly when printing
in landscape mode. You'll notice this in File...Print Preview most times.
Some of those sites recognize this and have a link on them for a
"printer-friendly" version of the page, but alas, a lot do not. If printing
those pages in landscape mode is not acceptable, check out this site: IE
Fixed-Width Printing - http://www.visiontech.ltd.uk/software/index.html

The only alternative I know of is to get a good screen capture program like
SnagIt - http://www.techsmith.com - capture the page and print from there.

I also take it you have the latest drivers for your printer from the
manufacturer's web site.

 

[Ron Hirsch]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I have the latest drivers for the several printers that I use for Web
Site printing.

It boils down to the fact that I can manage to get a decent printout if I
play with the settings each time, changing margins, scaling, "cheating" on
the paper size I tell the printer it is using, etc..

But that all just makes it a nuisance. I'd love to solve the problem and not
have to fool with that.

I'll check out the site you noted .

I got a reply from someone on a Tek forum I use. He confirmed that my
problems are not unique. He tried playing with some Registry entries, but
without any real success.

Ron

++++++++++++

 

[Ron Hirsch]

Jon,

I went to the UK site you noted, but I was never able to download/install
anything. I did spot what appeared to be the proper link, but that just
brought up another page, with nothing visible to download.

I've done more searching in Google, and from what I see, there are lots of
people complaining about the same problem. I even found an MS web page
disdussing this situation. they didn't call it a bug, they called it a
"Feature". Some "Feature"!!! Yuck.

I can resolve the issue by setting the main printer I use for most web page
printing at a 96% size level for printing. But, it immediately goes back to
the default 100% afterwards. I'm going to look into the possibility of
writing a short VB utility to set the printer up. I don't know if that'll be
possible however. I was never able to capture the necessary printer command
codes into a WP macro.

Ron

+++++++++++++

 

[Jon Kennedy]

The link I gave you http://www.visiontech.ltd.uk/software/index.html points
to the page to download the ActiveX control here
http://www.visiontech.ltd.uk/software/download/IEPrint.htm That second page
will try and download the ActiveX control that is used for the fix. If you
have ActiveX or such downloads blocked, and don't see the Information Bar at
the top of the IE window prompting you to download the control, then check
your security settings - Tools..Internet Options..Security tab.

"After installation, close the browser window and reopen a new one. You
should have a new printer icon with a small 'W' next to it on the toolbar.
Press this to bring up a print dialog which will then print the page fitted
to the width of your paper. Alternatively, hold down the Control key while
pressing the button and you will get a print preview instead."