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bwofficer
New Participant
August 23, 2017
Answered

How do I lock paper-size so users of my PDF cannot print it incorrectly?

  • August 23, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 3167 views

I have created an product information sheet as a PDF file. The document spec calls for it to be printed on A5 paper. How do I ensure that when it is printed off for inclusion with the product it cannot be printed on A4 paper by mistake (as seems to happen far too often)?

The file was created in Word 2016, saved to PDF. The people printing it off are opening it using Adobe Reader. I'm not sure whether it's Adobe Reader or a printer driver that is doing the rescaling to A4, but surely there's some property I can set in the document so that hardcopy size can't be overridden (or at least to make it very very hard for people to override it)?

BWOfficer

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer try67

    You can set some parameters (not the paper size, but for example whether or not the pages should be scaled to fit the paper) by using a script attached a button , but it will only work if the user uses your button and not the built-in Print command in the application.

    The Print dialog remembers the last settings used and re-applies them when it is opened.

    1 reply

    Bernd Alheit
    Community Expert
    Bernd AlheitCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 23, 2017

    Not possible.

    B
    bwofficerAuthor
    New Participant
    August 24, 2017

    Can I at least ensure that - when an Adobe Reader user comes to print the document - the Print dialog box they see is pre-populated with the correct print settings?

    Even if the user could then change the print settings, at least it would steer them towards using the correct ones. At the moment I'm being told that the Print dialog initial settings one person sees is for shrinking to printer margins someone else, on a different PC, sees a Print dialog defaulting to print actual size, and a third person sees a default of rescaling the document to print on A4!

    Where do the default values for these parameters come from? When the Print dialog opens, is it populated with default values taken from the PDF file or does it take default values from the printer? Or does it remember settings from the last print job? If I understood this, I might understand better why different people get different printouts of the same document even if they are just hitting print then OK!

    try67
    Community Expert
    try67Community ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    August 24, 2017

    You can set some parameters (not the paper size, but for example whether or not the pages should be scaled to fit the paper) by using a script attached a button , but it will only work if the user uses your button and not the built-in Print command in the application.

    The Print dialog remembers the last settings used and re-applies them when it is opened.

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