Printing in the middle of the page

[Roger Nye]

I am printing some slides with Powerpoint 2003 on A4.
They print touching the left paper edge with a double-
width margin on the right. Also the top margin is much
narrower than the bottom.

The paper size in Page Setup is set to A4.
The paper size in the printer settings is A4.

How can I get it to print with even margins?
So far my only workaround has been to print to Adobe PDF
and then print from Acrobat.

Thanks
Roger

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I am printing some slides with Powerpoint 2003 on A4.
They print touching the left paper edge with a double-
width margin on the right. Also the top margin is much
narrower than the bottom.

The paper size in Page Setup is set to A4.
The paper size in the printer settings is A4.

How can I get it to print with even margins?
So far my only workaround has been to print to Adobe PDF
and then print from Acrobat.

It's normal to get a certain amount of offset because of uneven printable areas
on inkjet printers, but it sounds as though something very different's going on
there if the images are printing clear to the edge of the paper.

Does your printer driver have the ability to turn borderless printing on and
off? If so, my guess is that it's on. Try disabling it and then experiment
with PowerPoint's "Scale to fit paper" setting to see if between the two things
improve.


--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Guest]

Hi Steve,
I don't think the printer has a borderless option.
It is a Hewlett Packard inkjet and it has to grip the
paper somewhere.

It is giving a nice margin of about 3/4" (2cm) on
average, which would be fine, if it were evenly
distributed, not 0" & 1.5".

The margins work fine with Word and Acrobat with their
default printer settings. In fact, I can export the
slides as images in Word and they print fine, although
resizing and positioning them is laborious.

Surely there has to be a way of adjusting the positioning
in Powerpoint, isn't there?

Thanks
Roger

 

[Echo S]

Unfortunately, printing is definitely not PPT's strong suit. (Do I win the
"understatement of the day" award?)

Steve cooked up a little workaround using the notes pages. Maybe it's worth
a shot?

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00097.htm

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the thought, but when I tried the Notes Master option, it put a
white rectangle in the slide area, even though I had deleted all the fields
on the Notes view.

I have to give up on experimenting now and get on with the job and so will
use Acrobat instead.

It is good to know that I am not missing anything obvious here, although
frankly I am amazed. It seems so basic.

Best regards
Roger

Unfortunately, printing is definitely not PPT's strong suit. (Do I win the
"understatement of the day" award?)

Steve cooked up a little workaround using the notes pages. Maybe it's worth
a shot?

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00097.htm

 

[Sonia]

My HP printer does have a borderless option that is intended for photos, but
gives weird results with PowerPoint slides. Try the following:
1. Open PowerPoint and your presentation
2. Go to File > Print > Properties
3. Click on the Layout tab. Look for the Borderless Printing button.
4. If you find it, click on it and in the next dialog *uncheck* the box next to
"Make this my default".

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

It really does seem odd. I'd suggest that you check HP's site to see if there
updated drivers for your printer.

Thanks for the thought, but when I tried the Notes Master option, it put a
white rectangle in the slide area, even though I had deleted all the fields
on the Notes view.

I have to give up on experimenting now and get on with the job and so will
use Acrobat instead.

It is good to know that I am not missing anything obvious here, although
frankly I am amazed. It seems so basic.

Best regards
Roger

Unfortunately, printing is definitely not PPT's strong suit. (Do I win the
"understatement of the day" award?)

Steve cooked up a little workaround using the notes pages. Maybe it's worth
a shot?

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00097.htm

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com
presenter, PPT Live '04
Oct 10-13, San Diego http://www.powerpointlive.com

Hi Steve,
I don't think the printer has a borderless option.
It is a Hewlett Packard inkjet and it has to grip the
paper somewhere.

It is giving a nice margin of about 3/4" (2cm) on
average, which would be fine, if it were evenly
distributed, not 0" & 1.5".

The margins work fine with Word and Acrobat with their
default printer settings. In fact, I can export the
slides as images in Word and they print fine, although
resizing and positioning them is laborious.

Surely there has to be a way of adjusting the positioning
in Powerpoint, isn't there?

Thanks
Roger


-----Original Message-----
I am printing some slides with Powerpoint 2003 on A4.
They print touching the left paper edge with a double-
width margin on the right. Also the top margin is
much
narrower than the bottom.

The paper size in Page Setup is set to A4.
The paper size in the printer settings is A4.

How can I get it to print with even margins?
So far my only workaround has been to print to Adobe
PDF
and then print from Acrobat.

It's normal to get a certain amount of offset because of
uneven printable areas
on inkjet printers, but it sounds as though something
very different's going on
there if the images are printing clear to the edge of
the paper.

Does your printer driver have the ability to turn
borderless printing on and
off? If so, my guess is that it's on. Try disabling it
and then experiment
with PowerPoint's "Scale to fit paper" setting to see if
between the two things
improve.


--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

.

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Guest]

Hi Steve and Sonia,
I have checked and:
(i) My printer does not have a borderless option; and
(ii) The driver is the latest on the HP web-site.

If it were the printer settings or the driver though, I do not see why only
Powerpoint would be affected.

I have printed the slides to a PDF format and printed them from Acrobat and
this worked very nicely. Perhaps Microsoft should license the PDF writer for
their software.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Regards
Roger

My HP printer does have a borderless option that is intended for photos, but
gives weird results with PowerPoint slides. Try the following:
1. Open PowerPoint and your presentation
2. Go to File > Print > Properties
3. Click on the Layout tab. Look for the Borderless Printing button.
4. If you find it, click on it and in the next dialog *uncheck* the box next to
"Make this my default".

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi Steve and Sonia,
I have checked and:
(i) My printer does not have a borderless option; and
(ii) The driver is the latest on the HP web-site.

If it were the printer settings or the driver though, I do not see why only
Powerpoint would be affected.

It handles scaling to fit slides to page sizes a bit differently from most apps.
Some things might well affect it and it only.

I'm not sure what to suggest you try next, although in some cases I've had good luck
uninstalling then reinstalling problem printer drivers (with a Windows reboot in
between for good measure)

I have printed the slides to a PDF format and printed them from Acrobat and
this worked very nicely. Perhaps Microsoft should license the PDF writer for
their software.

I wouldn't start holding my breath waiting for that one just yet. ;-)

 

[Guest]

I just tried Powerpoint Print Preview (which I hadn't been using before). It
shows a pretty accurate picture of what it is planning to print - all shifted
over to the left side of the page.

So it is not that the printer is doing something strange. It is doing
exactly what Powerpoint is telling it to do.

Regards
Roger

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I just tried Powerpoint Print Preview (which I hadn't been using before). It
shows a pretty accurate picture of what it is planning to print - all shifted
over to the left side of the page.

So it is not that the printer is doing something strange. It is doing
exactly what Powerpoint is telling it to do.

A reasonable conclusion, but not necessarily a correct one. PowerPoint bases what it'll
do at print time at least in part upon what the printer driver tells it. Naturally it
replicates that as closely as possible in the print preview, else the feature'd be of
little use.

If the printer driver hands it bad information or PowerPoint somehow misinterprets the
information it's handed, then both the printout and the preview will likely be wrong.

It may well be that PPT is bungling the job, but the odds are that it's in the driver or
elsewhere, else we'd have heard this same complaint a lot in the past. That's not the
case.

You might check to see if there are other drivers available for the printer; try
installing one from your Windows CD if it's available, for example. What exact printer
model is this, by the way?

Regards
Roger

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Guest]

It's an HP Officejet G85.

A reasonable conclusion, but not necessarily a correct one. PowerPoint bases what it'll
do at print time at least in part upon what the printer driver tells it. Naturally it
replicates that as closely as possible in the print preview, else the feature'd be of
little use.

If the printer driver hands it bad information or PowerPoint somehow misinterprets the
information it's handed, then both the printout and the preview will likely be wrong.

It may well be that PPT is bungling the job, but the odds are that it's in the driver or
elsewhere, else we'd have heard this same complaint a lot in the past. That's not the
case.

You might check to see if there are other drivers available for the printer; try
installing one from your Windows CD if it's available, for example. What exact printer
model is this, by the way?



--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

It's an HP Officejet G85.

Can't find anything specific to PPT about it other than another complaint of the same
problem (with no resolution).

Whether the problem's with PPT or the drivers or whatever, you may have to resort to
the PDF printing trick, unfortunately, since the printer's discontinued by HP.

I just tried Powerpoint Print Preview (which I hadn't been using before). It
shows a pretty accurate picture of what it is planning to print - all shifted
over to the left side of the page.

So it is not that the printer is doing something strange. It is doing
exactly what Powerpoint is telling it to do.

A reasonable conclusion, but not necessarily a correct one. PowerPoint bases what it'll
do at print time at least in part upon what the printer driver tells it. Naturally it
replicates that as closely as possible in the print preview, else the feature'd be of
little use.

If the printer driver hands it bad information or PowerPoint somehow misinterprets the
information it's handed, then both the printout and the preview will likely be wrong.

It may well be that PPT is bungling the job, but the odds are that it's in the driver or
elsewhere, else we'd have heard this same complaint a lot in the past. That's not the
case.

You might check to see if there are other drivers available for the printer; try
installing one from your Windows CD if it's available, for example. What exact printer
model is this, by the way?

Regards
Roger

:


--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================