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November 6, 2016
Question

Page size Presets on Mac OSX not being remembered / used by Adobe Reader

  • November 6, 2016
  • 0 replies
  • 453 views

Tl;dr: Does Adobe Reader not use or otherwise skip Mac OS Presets with respect to page sizes?

Situation:

I have two different printers, a desktop and a Plotter. I use each, as you would expect, to print to two different sizes of paper. The desktop is letter size and the plotter is used for 24x36 or 36x48 documents.

Using Preview in the Mac I can select from the saved presets I have made and it will assign the correct page size, rotation and such for the printer I have selected. Five clicks and my documents are printing.

Using Adobe Reader the presets do not appear to work correctly. If I select my desired preset and then check the page setup I see the page size is unaffected and I then have to change to the correct size.

To print I now have to open print select my printer, then open the printer preferences, select what I want, then go to page setup, select what I want and then finally print the actual document.  Multiple clicks and if all the settings are not correct at least two feet of paper is potentially wasted!

The result now is printing takes many more steps as I have to keep switching between the two printers different page sizes.

Troubleshooting:

I’ve double checked testing the presets in Preview and they still work fine there to set the correct page size.

I’ve checked for the effect on two different Macs. One is running the newest OS and one is running an older version. Both experience the issue.

I can set the system default to one printer & page size or the other but that still means printing to the opposite printer or alternate page size requires multiple steps to print.

Research:

In searching for others with the same issue I have found many mentions of Adobe Reader presets in respect to two-sided printing where people just make one option or the other the default.

I found one mention of a similar person that just uses Preview for everything and Reader for just fillable forms. It included a mention of Adobe Reader not using the presets.

I am aware of the dialog that says “The Print Setup dialog box is provided by the operating system. To ensure that you can use the full print capabilities of Adobe Reader, please set all print options from the Application print dialog box. Do you want to continue?” However that seems to indicate I would miss a feature intrinsic to Adobe Reader, in this case I just want to use an OS level setting (Page size).

Question:

Does anyone have a good link or information that Adobe Reader definitely does not / will not fully use all the settings of a preset on a Mac System?

Ultimately, my desire is to be able to quickly print out my documents regardless of the size. If I need to print a letter size document one moment and then print out a 24x36 document right after I would like to have it as easy in Adobe Reader  as it is in Preview. That is, click my desired printer and then the desired preset and be done. 

If I have to go back to Preview then so be it. Though, I would like confirmation from others that I have explored all options and that reverting to Preview is my only usable option to meet this goal.

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