Why Is My Printer Printing Smaller Than Normal

My printer prints so small that no one can read information technology. How exercise I change the size of the fonts?

This is a very mutual trouble.

Unfortunately, at that place’due south no unmarried solution that applies in all cases; the issue tin exist caused by many different things.

But as unfortunately, it’s rarely the printer itself at fault, just the software involved somewhere along the way. I’1000 agape the result can be exceptionally complex and disruptive.

Printers just follow orders

A printer only does what Windows and the applications that are printing tell it to practise. Those, in plow, just tell the printer what to practice based on the characteristics of whatever it is you lot’re printing.

That ways if it’s press likewise small, either what it’s press really
is
minor, or the application doing the press is telling information technology to print at that size.

I’ll suspension that downward into two areas: the printer

Needless to say, I can’t give y’all “click hither, then here” kind of directions for this. You’ll demand to do some exploring.

Start with the impress dialog for the program yous’re using. Options here are by and large limited to the nuts: page range selection, orientation, peradventure margins, and and so on. On some, still, there may be what’s called a “scaling” pick. This allows you to specify that the folio should be printed as-is, at 100%, or alternately “scaled to fit” – zooming in or out to fit the content to the actual size of the printed page.

If in that location’due south nothing helpful in the initial dialog, then look for “settings”, “preferences”, “more settings”, or “advanced settings”, which may requite you admission to more than avant-garde controls for your printer from that application. If nowadays, “zoom” or “scaling” options are ofttimes buried in advanced dialogs.

As I mentioned, many applications nowadays their own impress dialog, merely in many cases likewise let access to the “system print dialog” – meaning the default Windows print dialog – as an alternative. Look for an option to do so, and and then go exploring in the settings presented in that location.

Exploring the diverse options exposed past the print dialog and the printer driver, while confusing, is frequently the best first place to showtime.

Many applications also include a “Page setup” option, often under a File menu, separate from the bodily Impress choice. These usually include settings such as margins, print area, and more than.

Choosing what to print

The most common mistake I encounter is that when viewing a spider web folio, people simply use the browser’s impress part. It’s counter-intuitive, but that is rarely the best fashion to print the contents of a web folio (unless you
want
all the ads and extraneous material).

On many web pages, there is a link that allows y’all to print a minimally-formatted version of that page that looks better on paper. (It’s possible for web pages to do this for you automatically, only generally they do not.) Especially when information technology comes to email applications, this approach to printing a message can have dramatically more than satisfying results (exist certain to open up the message in its ain window to start – a “preview” window of email rarely prints well at all).

Look for a printer icon, for a “formatted for impress” link, or something similar. Click on that, and
then
apply the browser’s print role to impress the consequence.

More advanced solutions

Many applications have a great bargain of command over what portions of what y’all’re looking at are printed. Microsoft Office programs, for example, often include the ability to scale, define the range of pages you want printed, margins, headers, footers, and more, all within the application.

If y’all print often, it can be very helpful to familiarize yourself with these options.

When things yet go incorrect printing spider web pages

Sometimes the options y’all want simply don’t exist. Be it the application or the printer software, no thing what you do, the spider web page you’re attempting to print only prints
wrong.

I have two concluding-ditch things for you to consider:

• Evernote
  (besides as a few other applications, such as Pocket) have the ability to ‘clip’ web pages. The application makes a copy of the page you’re viewing, often with the choice to clean information technology upward significantly. Then you can impress this copy instead of the original.
• Re-create/paste is your friend. Depending on the content, sometimes the most expeditious solution is to select the content you want to print, copy it, and then paste it into a word processor where you have more control over how the results volition be printed.

Printers – it’s complicated

There’due south no doubt that printing is complicated. In part, this is due to the fact that printers can be then incredibly different from one another. In office, it’south due to the fact that printing is often an afterthought in many applications.

Regardless of the reasons, when you meet bug such every bit impress that’s too small to read comfortably, it’south fourth dimension to go exploring.

Be certain to bring a salubrious dose of patience when yous exercise.