paper-size

[Sebastian]

The thread I started last october seems outdated, so I includ the
history below to proceed with the thread:

Hello John,
I just came about to deal with this issue again. I´m not that firm
with use-groups, so I don´t know what happened to the thread I stared
last oktober (can´t add to the thread; is it outdated by now?).
Anyways: Thank you for your answer! I don´t really get what you were
saying about Word / printer / metric stock, though: Neither did Word
ask me about anything during the installation routine, nor do I know
how to figure out this metric / imperial stock issue afterwards.
Aditionally: This "margin setting issue" does not seem to be a problem
of MS Word exclusively: The same occurs for example in the Apple
application "Text Edit" and you can address the paper-size settings in
the finder help. It seems that Apple / the OS sets the printable
margins of the DIN A4 format to 1,46cm by default. And this "clashes"
with the MS Word setting of the foot-line at "1,25cm" by default.
Well, what I did to solve this issue: I created a new paper-size
style, based on the original DIN A4 style provided by the OS an
adjusted the lower margin (set it to 0,64cm, according to the other 3
margins) and applied this paper-size style to all templates I use
food-lines with.
What do you think? Any idea why Apple sets the the lower margin of DIN
A4 paper-size too high for Word food-lines. Or am I on the wrong
track?
Below I have included the thread. Additionally I post it completely
again.

Cheers,

Sebastian

-------------------------------------
Hi Sebastian:

No, that is not true.

DIN A4 is the standard paper size in all except one country in the
world

Use Word's Format>Document command to adjust your margins to anything
you
like. Then click the Default button to set your new measurements for
all
future documents you create.

However, please note that this is not your problem: your problem is
that you
are formatting the document for the wrong printer.

Word will automatically move your document margins if you try to place
headers or footers outside the printable margins of the printer. The
only
time it gets that wrong is when it is using the wrong driver for the
printer
in use.

When you installed Word, it should have automatically asked you
whether you
wanted to use metric or imperial paper stock. You may wish to re-set
your
defaults to metric if your installation has been done badly. The
process is
described in the Help.

Hope this helps


Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Mac]]

Hi Sebastian:

I use an HP printer, and I set 2.5 cm as the bottom margin for A4, with
the header and footer set at 1.25 cm.

Word has a little-documented "feature" that expands the top or bottom
margin as much as is required to accommodate the header and footer. So
it doesn't really matter what you set it to.

The Word Normal defaults are 2.54, (top and bottom) and 3.17 (left and
right).

Most printers specify an "unprintable area" between the edge of the
paper and the extremity of the text. To be on the safe side for
commercial printing or binding, this should be 1 cm all round. HP
printers will go closer than this, as you have discovered. Mine will go
to "full bleed" (i.e. zero) but it's designed to be capable of photo
printing as well as normal printing.

I think it's really the "non-printable area" you are talking about, not
the "margin". Going back to your original problem, you had lines being
cut off in your footer. That can only be because Word has not correctly
read the printer driver, or the printer driver is wrong.

There are three distances involved here: The non-printable area, which
is the to the edge of the sheet at which the printer can print. For
most HP printers, that's 0.5 cm top, left, and right, and .64 at the
bottom.

The next distance is the distance from the edge of the sheet to the edge
of the body text. This is what Word refers to as the "Page Margin".
You need this to be large enough to accommodate your header or footer and
still leave a pleasing gap to the text.

The final measurement is the Header or footer position "from edge".
This sets the distance between top of the running header and the edge of
the sheet, or the bottom of the running footer and the edge of the
sheet. This distance must be greater than the non-printing margin of
the printer, otherwise you will get lines cut off.

For example, let's assume you have a two-line footer at 10 points font.
If your line height is "Single" Word will express your text on a 12
point line, allowing 2 points of leading. The two lines of text thus
occupy 24 points. Lets assume your footer style specifies 3 pts above
and 6 points below (a default measurement -- I tend to use 8 points
below for a 10 point footer). The total space for the footer is now 24
+ 18 = 42 points (1.47 cm). Given that your non-printing margin is 0.67
cm, your footer distances should be set above that: say to 0.8 cm to
provide a margin for error. The top of your footer will thus be 2.27 cm
from the edge of the page. You need to provide at least 20 points gap
between the footer and the text for a pleasing visual separation, so add
0.70 cm, making a total of 2.97 cm for the footer. So set the bottom
margin at 3 cm (allowing for a separator line between the text and the
footer.

The last thing to ensure is that your Page Number is actually "in" the
footer. If you use Insert>Page Number from within the footer, it will
be. If you are not in the header or footer when you insert your page
number, the page number is in a separate text box that floats
independently of the footer. It's anchored to the footer, but it's not
in it. Delete it, and insert it properly so that it sits on one of your
footer lines.

There you go: you may have to read that through a couple of times before
you get the hang of it -- I found it difficult to understand at first.

Once you get it right, click the DEFAULT button in the Page Layout
dialog to store the setting in your Normal template. If the template in
use is NOT Normal.dot, then make sure you change the Save Changes to...
box to the template you have attached to the document. Normal is the
default, if you are using a different template you need to change that
every time or your change will be saved to Normal, and you will wonder
why your changes are being "ignored".

Oh: I doubt if there's anything much wrong with your HP driver, but on
the Mac in Word X, it is very easy to format the document for the
"Default Printer" or "Any Printer" instead of the "HP DeskJet" or
whatever printer it is that you are using. If you do, Word has no idea
where the printer's page dimensions are, and cannot warn you if you have
margins set outside the printable area of the page.

Hope this helps

Hi Sebastian:
If it's working now, you've done the job.

The settings are not made by Apple or the OS, they are made by your
printer manufacturer. Your printer manufacturer supplies a "driver" for
your printer which contains the measurements.

The driver is a little text file full of values and settings. Sometimes
it helps to delete the printer and re-install it to obtain a clean copy
of the driver. Sometimes it helps to go to the printer manufacturer's
website and download the very latest version of their driver.

Having done that, the OS and every application that prints reads the
measurements from the printer driver. To reset the measurements, you
can use System Preferences. And margins you specify in the Printers
control panel will apply globally to the whole computer. Or you can
explicitly set measurements in Word the way you have done for your
templates. These measurements override the computer's defaults.

Hope this helps


--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Sebastian]

Hello John,
I return to the thread again including the last messages:

In MS-Word I find this seting at: File>Page Setup>Setting click
"adjust paper-size" and then click "new". Editable entries for
"paper-size" and "print margins" (ment is the unprintable area) are
being generated (based on the default DIN A4 seting, I think). There I
indeed read for lower limit: 1,46cm.
Strangly the Word error-dialog you mentioned does not pop up. Maybe
this has something to do with anohter bug I encountered: Playing
around with these seting I found the Word-preview inconsistent.
Sometimes it does not reproduce changes made in the paper size
settings correctly. Only if you first go via the File>Print>preview
(OS feature) these changes are being "detected" consecutively by the
Word preview and thus being displayed correctely. ... I don´t expect
answer on this, though. I have better thing to do with my time
Well, I´ll "be so kind" and go reporting this to HP.
Thank you John.
Have a nice weekend!
Cheerrs,

Sebastian


----Original Message ----- From: "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Mac"
Am 01.03.2005 um 12:59 schrieb John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Mac]:

Sebastian:

Yes, I agree with you. But I have one question: How do you "know"
what the lower limit set by the printer driver is?

Normally, if you set the bottom margin to an unacceptable value, Word
will produce a dialog saying "One or more margins are outside of the
printable area. Fix or Ignore"

If you click Fix, word will then set the margin to the lowest
acceptable limit. If you then go back into File>Page Setup, you can
see what it has set the margin to. That's your lowest printable
margin. Try that: is that where you are reading 1.46 cm?

If so, then yes, I would ask HP how to go about correcting that.
Chances are, they will tell you to remove and replace the printer.

I am not sure what the measurement is on my printer (which is an HP
2510 and so uses the same driver yours does) and I am currently in
Singapore and cannot fly home to Sydney to check, but I think it might
be 0.64.

Cheers

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical
Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sebastian Streckbein"
<[email protected]>
To: "John McGhie" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: answer to a thread from october 2004
(http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&lr=&group=microsoft.public.mac.office.word)


Hi John,
wohw! I´m impressed! Thank you for all the in depth details!
As is has probably occurred to you, right from the beginning this
discussion is an academic one, rather than a pragmatic one. I have the
original problem solved (lowered by hand the margin of the lower
unprintable area set to high by default).
You are right: I have been - and still am - talking about the
"unprintable area". The "unprintable area" on bottom of a default DIN
A4 styl systemwide is set at 1,46cm in my case. I have installed the
"HP HSP 1210 all-in-one" model. Similar default setting find some
friends who have installed different printers. The things I wonder
about are the following: Why is the lower margin of unprintable area
set to 1,46cm by default in my case? Why does the same issue occure in
other cases? Why doesn´t exist any problem with the same printer set
up
with a PC operating on Win 2000? There, it seems, the unprintable area
is "small enough" to permit a standard footline (single line, 10 or 12
pts fond) in MS-Word.
Let´s see if I sum it up correctly: It does not seem a "defective
driver" problem since it occurs in other cases and you neither think
so. It seems to be a "general problem" that (some) printers set up for
Macintosh (and metric system?) install drivers with the
default-setting
for lower noprintable margin set "too high" (for Word´d default
settings of footlines). You report that
is the to the edge of the sheet at which the printer can print. For
most HP printers, that's 0.5 cm top, left, and right, and .64 at the
bottom.
In my case - and in others - it is 1,46cm. Maybe I go and report this
bug to HP?
Any comment from your part? Do you agree or disagree?
Cheers,

Sebastian