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Inspiring
July 28, 2017
Answered

Can printer settings (margin/stretch) be embedded in the PDF file when saving?

  • July 28, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1182 views

I have a client who is generating PDFs that users can download and print from their home printer.  It is very important that the printed images are scaled properly when printed (as they will be cut out and used as a size template). He is finding that the PDF files printout slightly differently on different people's printers (which might be attributed to margin settings or "stretch to fit" in printer preferences). Is there anyway when saving a PDF to help guarantee that when the user prints it, it will always be the correct scale?

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Correct answer Cari Jansen

Adobe Acrobat Reader tends to use a default setting that scales the printouts to fit based on printer specific settings for the user, which will result in size differences when printing PDFs indeed.  Most end users won't be aware this happens, nor know how to adjust settings so that the scaling doesn't occur.

However, you can apply some Print Dialog presets that would overwrite those defaults. For example change Print Scaling to 'none', which means this scaling will no longer occur by default.

  1. Choose File > Properties
  2. Click the Advanced tab.
  3. Adjust the settings user Print Dialog Presets

1 reply

Cari JansenCorrect answer
Legend
July 29, 2017

Adobe Acrobat Reader tends to use a default setting that scales the printouts to fit based on printer specific settings for the user, which will result in size differences when printing PDFs indeed.  Most end users won't be aware this happens, nor know how to adjust settings so that the scaling doesn't occur.

However, you can apply some Print Dialog presets that would overwrite those defaults. For example change Print Scaling to 'none', which means this scaling will no longer occur by default.

  1. Choose File > Properties
  2. Click the Advanced tab.
  3. Adjust the settings user Print Dialog Presets