Double sided printing problem

Report · Sep 21, 2021

I work at a large company where they generate forms to be filled in, and business users like myself input the data in the forms and print them for client signature. The most recent generation of forms cannot be printed double-sided, which is problematic, because we pay for the paper. I don't know if it's a setting they are using when they generate the updated forms, so if this is just a setting they can change that would be fine (we'll tell them to change the setting.) But i would need to know what that option or setting is.

But it would be even more immediately helpful if we could force double sided printing. When you open up the print dialog, "print on both sides" is not checked. You can check the box, but when you retrieve the printout it is printed on a single side. This happens with both Acrobat Reader DC as well as Acrobat Pro 17 (Classic) Version 2017.011.30197 and is infuriating. There is no issue printing double sided on older versions of these forms, or in any other application. So I'm stumped.

We're running Windows 10 V 1909 OS Build 18363.1734 if that is relevant. We did have the workaround of saving the PDF to disk and opening it with Chrome and printing from there, and that worked (though was a pain) but IT has disallowed printing from Chrome, so I'm here asking for help.

Report · Sep 21, 2021

Your IT department should find a solution for you, but I'm sure they are too busy to help with your "insignificant" problem (speaking from experience). Here is a link that may help:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-double-sided-acrobat-reader.html

You might also check if there is an update to your print driver, (do a google search of your printer name and model).

Report · Sep 22, 2021

Yeah, I tried that link already (and our IT dept is clueless about the issue, and, frankly, too many other things to mention, but I digress).

Printer driver is the latest, and it seems to be an Acrobat/Reader issue, because I can print the same forms using other programs. So the printer driver seems fine.

Is there a way that a form created using Office 365 could be saved in such a way that future double sided printing was impossible?

This is a recent development, and it's only the latest versions of the forms. All prior versions still print double sided without issue. When the new ones get to the print dialog box, double sided printing is not on and no amount of clicking to enable it makes it work. Maddening.

Report · Sep 22, 2021

I don't have a double sided printer and I have a Mac, so I can only throw out some guesses. Do you have the option to print as an image? (possibly under advanced settings).

Are you able to print non-forms as double sided? If so, you can try running a preflight profile to flatten the form fields. Tools> Print production> Preflight> Fixups. Or... Save-as Optimized PDF> Discard objects> Flatten form fields.

Not an ideal work-around as the PDFs will no longer be forms, however you can add either the optimize settings or a saved preflight to an Acrobat Action to quickly apply the action to a PDF or folder of PDFs.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with a real fix.

Report · Sep 23, 2021

Does changing the file properties to Duplex help?

File> Properties> Advanced> Duplex

Report · Sep 23, 2021

Hi Luke,

I'll bet that's it. They saved the form with DuplexMode set to Simplex, and they've protected the form so the option to change that is greyed out. I'll see if I can find out who owns the forms and see if I can get them to change that and see if it allows for duplex printing.

Report · Sep 23, 2021

Apparently not the solution. I have an older version of one of the forms, and it also has DuplexMode as simplex, yet there is no issue with printing it double sided. In fact it defaults to double sided.

I am noticing differences in the Security tab. The one that we can print duplex has no security, and the one we can't has password security.