Common problem--margins wrong on printed pages

[jd_wright]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I've seen this problem a lot, so I'm sorry to add to the din, but no one seems to have given a straight AND workable answer yet.

My document's margins are set at 1" on each side. Print preview shows the document looking fine. But when I print, the bottom margin looks like it's about 0.5", the right margin is about 1.25", and the left margin is about 0.75".

Please don't tell me to update Office, OSX, and my printer--that has already been done. Just tell me how to fix this problem.

If the best advice I can get is that I should just play with the margin settings in my document until the printed page looks right, then Word 2008 is an even bigger piece of **** than I thought.

 

[John McGhie]

That's generally a sign that the paper in the printer is not the size
specified in Page setup for the document.

It could also mean the document contains unresolved tracked changes and you
have specified "Use balloons" in tracked changes.

Since both of these are "user" settings, a "straight" answer might make some
comment about the user who made those settings: are you sure you want that?


Cheers

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
I've seen this problem a lot, so I'm sorry to add to the din, but no one seems
to have given a straight AND workable answer yet.

My document's margins are set at 1" on each side. Print preview shows the
document looking fine. But when I print, the bottom margin looks like it's
about 0.5", the right margin is about 1.25", and the left margin is about
0.75".

Please don't tell me to update Office, OSX, and my printer--that has already
been done. Just tell me how to fix this problem.

If the best advice I can get is that I should just play with the margin
settings in my document until the printed page looks right, then Word 2008 is
an even bigger piece of **** than I thought.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[jd_wright]

Aside from the bit of snideness, that was actually very helpful.

The page was set up for A4 rather than 8.5" x 11".

But I'm not an idiot. I would never set up an 8.5" x 11" document for an A4 page. The document was originally created in WordPerfect and then converted into Word format.

Who would ever think that Word would change the page size or paper type during that process?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi D:

Ah! Converted from WordPerfect

It is widely known that the conversion from WordPerfect to Word is, shall we
say, "less than exact". So quite a lot of the Word user population would
expect problems.

That is the first time I have heard it change the paper size... But in
WordPerfect, the paper size can be encoded in multiple places in the file,
often in obscure ways. It's a bit of a guessing game to decide which is the
"current" setting that should be used. So it would not astonish me to hear
that a converter guessed wrongly.

The difference between a WordPerfect document and a Word document is the
difference between a boat and a truck. They are both forms of transport,
but other than that there are few similarities. Essentially they describe a
document using an entirely different object model. So converting from one
to the other is extremely complex and not entirely scientific: there is also
an art form involved: you have to guess what the user's intention was, in
order to express it correctly in Word

I guess the bottom line is "A converted WordPerfect document will always
have some problems or strange settings in Word."

Hope this helps

Aside from the bit of snideness, that was actually very helpful.

The page was set up for A4 rather than 8.5" x 11".

But I'm not an idiot. I would never set up an 8.5" x 11" document for an A4
page. The document was originally created in WordPerfect and then converted
into Word format.

Who would ever think that Word would change the page size or paper type during
that process?

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[jd_wright]

Very helpful indeed. Thanks!