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After saving files, probably the most common task is to print out what you've done. Assuming you have created or edited some document, how do you to get it to print?
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Simple answer:
Click on the
 Print button on the toolbar or use the File
> Print command from the menu. But wait! You may have an unhappy surprise if you don't think about a few things first.
Design for your printer
We looked earlier at
Printer Features and Printer Types.
In those lessons we saw that not all features are available on all printers. So
the first thing you must know is what kind of printer you have and which
features it has. If you want to print a colorful drawing you did in Paint or a
beautiful sunset photo, but
your printer won't do color, you will be disappointed in the printout!
Features include the ability to handle various typefaces, styles, fonts,
font sizes, color, and graphics. Old dot matrix printers don't do color at all
and are very limited in other features! (Dot matrix printers are still being
used in businesses every day!) Be familiar with what your printer will do and
what it won't do. Design your documents with the printer in mind.
Some programs do not adjust what you see on the screen to the capabilities
of your default printer. So what you see onscreen would not be quite how it will print.
Margins are a particular problem. Even
some WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs can be misleading, as we will discuss below. |
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Print Preview
 M ost programs these days have a WYSIWYG view
while editing or offer a Print Preview command on the File menu or a
 button on the toolbar/ribbon.
 Preview
Before Printing: EVERY time!! You will waste a lot of paper if you fail to look at what the printer thinks it is supposed to do. Especially check for the number of pages. If your table or picture is too wide
or if there are blank lines at the end of the document, the excess will print on a separate page. You may want to reformat the document.
  Special
Warning about Spreadsheets:
It is VERY easy to accidentally format ALL of the thousands of cells available in a single spreadsheet, for example by putting a border around ALL instead of just the cells you actually have data in. This creates a document of dozens or hundreds of paper pages. If you print this whole document (which is usually the default for the Print button on the toolbar), it will take a very long time, waste a lot of paper, and really irritate everyone else who needs to use the printer! Check the number of pages in the document and be SURE it is right before you start a print job.
Print Dialog Box
 The Print dialog box offers a number of choices,
depending on your particular printer. The illustration shows some common
choices: which printer (drop list of printers), what part of the document to
print, the total number of copies. On a network you often have a choice of printers to use.
Even a stand-alone computer might have more than one printer or several
virtual printers that create PDF files or fax documents.
Usually the Print dialog does not include the total number of pages in the document.
For example, you must look on the status bar in MS Word to see how many
pages there are. The illustration below shows you are on page 1 out of total
of 30. Sometimes the Print Preview will show the total number of pages. These variations between different programs can get quite confusing!
You really need to know how many sheets of paper the printer will need!
Page Settings
 Your program may have a toolbar/ribbon button
or a menu command called Page Setup that lets you set the Page Settings.
Office 2007 and 2010 have these choices on the ribbon (new version of a
toolbar).
These include:
- Orientation - portrait or landscape
- Margin widths - top, bottom, left, right
- Header/Footer - text and margins
(Sometimes handled from a different menu command.)
The result of using the wrong page settings can be quite startling - half your picture is on another page or your header doesn't print.
In the illustration dialog from Notepad, notice the various choices. The
margins come from the default printer. Your margins may be quite different! This dialog box includes a textbox for you to enter the text for the header and footer.
 The
ampersand symbol, &, is combined with certain letters as a code for things that are commonly wanted in the header or footer.
The Notepad page on the right shows how the header and footer set above would look. Since there was no code for alignment entered,
the header and footer are centered by default.
Here is a reference chart for commonly used codes:
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&f | Inserts the name of file, or "Untitled" if the file is not named yet |
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&d | Current date according to your computer |
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&t | Current time according to your computer |
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&p | Page number |
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&& | Inserts an ampersand in your text |
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&l | Aligns the header/footer on the left |
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&c | Aligns the header/footer in the center |
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&r | Aligns the header/footer on the right |
No Print Area:
Your printer has an area where it can't print for physical reasons. This no-print area varies from printer to printer. Commonly, printers can print within .25" of the left and right edges and .50" of the top and bottom of the paper. But this is not universally true. My
old HP500C could print from .33" of the top but only from .67" of the bottom of the page.
Your Print Preview or WSYIWYG view of your document might not take the no-print area into account,
especially if you wind up using a printer besides the default printer. Thus, part of the document might not print even though you see it onscreen. Test your software to see how it handles margins that overlap the no-print area. And don't forget to LOOK for the header and footer! It's easy to miss that they are missing.
Header or footer doesn't print or is only partially there:
You have either run into the no-print area, or you have set the header/footer margin too close to the size of the page margin, leaving no room for the header/footer itself!
Some programs give you total control of the margins, header,
and footer. The dialog box to the right allows you to adjust absolutely everything about the margin and the header, all in one spot!
Other programs handle this situation differently. They might not let you set all of the distances in the figure. Headers and footers are really useful and are often required for school papers. But they can be tricky to manage and one reason is
the differences between programs! |
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~~ 1 Cor. 10:31 ...whatever you do, do it all for the
glory of God. ~~
Last updated:
03 Oct 2011 |
