Many users discover that printer margins are not as adjustable as they might expect. Unlike software settings, these margins are often a hardware limitation inherent to the printer itself. You might find that your printer, regardless of settings in Windows or its hardware panel, always leaves a border of about 0.2″ to 0.3″ around the edge of the page. This isn’t a changeable setting but a physical constraint of the printing mechanism.
However, there are workarounds to better utilize your Print Page, especially when dealing with documents like PDF manuals that are frequently distributed digitally. One such method allows you to print a 2-up layout of an 8.5 x 11 PDF onto a single sheet, effectively enlarging the text by minimizing the perceived margins.
Understanding Printer Margin Limits
It’s crucial to understand that printer margins are typically fixed due to the mechanical requirements of feeding paper and applying ink or toner. These are not software-defined margins that you can simply set to zero in your application’s print dialog. The physical print head and paper handling mechanisms necessitate a certain unprintable area around the page edges.
Utilizing Custom Paper Sizes for Enhanced Print Area
A clever technique to expand the printable area involves exploiting custom paper size settings, if your printer supports them, like the Xerox Phaser mentioned. The idea is to define a custom paper size that is slightly larger than the physical paper you are using.
For instance, to print two 8.5 x 11 inch PDF pages side-by-side on Legal size paper (8.5 x 14 inches), you can create a custom paper size, such as “Big Legal,” defined as 10 x 14.3 inches. By telling the printer it has a larger paper area, it attempts to print closer to the physical edges of the actual Legal size paper, effectively expanding the image of each PDF page and thus enlarging the text.
Steps to Implement Custom Paper Size Printing
- Access Printer Settings: Navigate to your printer settings through your operating system’s control panel or printing preferences.
- Define Custom Paper Size: Look for options to define custom paper sizes. This is often found in advanced settings or paper handling sections.
- Create “Big Legal” (or similar): Create a new custom paper size. For Legal paper, try dimensions slightly larger, like 10 x 14.3 inches. Experiment to find the maximum size your printer accepts without tiling.
- Select Custom Size for Printing: When printing your PDF in a 2-up layout, select the newly defined custom paper size in the print dialog.
Limitations and Considerations
While this method effectively enlarges the text and maximizes the print page area for each PDF page image, it has limitations. You likely won’t be able to reduce the space between the two side-by-side images, as this is often defined within the PDF itself. Additionally, exceeding the printer’s physical paper size limits by too much can trigger tiling, where the print job is spread across multiple sheets.
Conclusion: Efficiently Using Your Print Page
Despite these limitations, using custom paper sizes offers a valuable workaround to optimize your print page when printing 2-up PDF documents. This approach provides a more readable, moderately expanded text size, especially beneficial for software manuals and similar documents. Furthermore, printing two pages on one sheet inherently saves paper and reduces toner consumption, contributing to cost-effectiveness and environmental consciousness.
