Participant

Answered

How to change the default paper size in (print) -> page setup?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
August 19, 2020
4 replies
86143 views

Hello,

We are using Acrobat Pro (or reader) to print our invoices. As we are in a EU country our invoices are in A4 format.

The problem we face: Acrobat insists the documents are in Letter format. I therefore have to go to: Print -> Page Setup and change the paper size from Letter to A4 every single time I have to print something.

As you can imagine this is very annoying and time consuming.

Question: Is there any way to change the defaults of this dialog? I want Acrobat to remember we are in a country which, 99.9% of the time, uses A4 (or any other DIN format).

Attached you can find a sample document I made in Word (in A4) which is not recognized / setup correctly in my Acrobat.

Thank you very much,

Simon

System info:

Installed Acrobat: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe
Version: 20.12.20041.394260
Creation Date: 2020/07/31
Creation Time: 3:34:32 AM
Locale: English (United States)

Time Zone: W. Europe Standard Time

This_is_a_A4_Test_Document.pdf

Correct answer JPN19

I found a solution for my own settings. Hopefully this works for everyone else.

1. Go to your Printer & scanners (Windows; on Mac similar) and select Adobe PDF.
2. Click the Printer properties option.
3. On the Adobe PDF Properties pop-up window, go to the Device Settings tab.
4. Change the paper type from Letter to A4.
5. On the General tab (of the same pop-up window), check that A4 is shown instead of Letter.
6. Click the Apply button.

7. Test from Word, Excel, etc. (e.g., save as PDF)

A

ashley_1246

Participant

I am not sure if you can possible help with this but some how everytime I try to print, it cuts off the put of my PDF document - where the grey area is. I have tried everything and cannot figure out what to do.

Thank you for any help!!

ls_rbls

Community Expert

Hi @ashley_1246 ,

In the printer dialog shown in your screenshot, What happens if you select "Fit" instead of "Actual Size"?

Also, note in the slide that all margins should be 1" inch. The bottom margin is set at 2.66 inches, which you can modify manually, but it is not performed directly from the Adobe PDF Printer dialog.

I am curious if this is happening to all the PDF documents that you print or just one particular PDF?

See this old discussion:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/preflight-pdf-fixups-how-to-scale-pages-to-us-letter-not-a4/m-p/12004003

Scroll down on that thread and see the tips I pointed out to one of the community members on how to do that manually.

H

henkboum

Participant

go to preference settings in your printer, change the paper size, ADOBE will check this when you print.

But any aplication ll use the paper size your choise here.

M

markv69409834

Participant

Pls don't give answers or comments if you haven't read the previous comment properly. We know how to change the paper size in the printer settings. It works fine. But then, after a few weeks, it changes the defaults back to something else that we do NOT want. We should not have to check the printer settings every time we print - that's why we set our preferred defaults. The question is, why don't our printer settings remain intact until WE change them?

ls_rbls

Community Expert

@markv69409834 I agree with all of your observations.

If on Microsoft Windows, I've been able to work around that by customizing the desired page dimensions in the Control Panel ==>> Printers & Scanners ==>> "Print server properties" as suggested by @JPN19

This is not done through printer sever configuration settings accessed with the printing device driver software. However, it seems to work fine for me for me if it is managed at the operating system level (i.e. if on Linux or macOS it can be managed through CUPS too).

The problem that you've observed also seems to be related to the default settings of the Acrobat Distiller as shown in the slide above.

In which case, a few things need to be manually tweaked there to prevent PDF documents from reverting to undesired defaults at printing time..

This articles add some interesting relevant insights to keep in mind:

https://fabrikbrands.com/a4-vs-letter-what-is-the-difference-between-a4-and-us-letter-size/

There is a setting, for example, in the Advanced Options ==>> "Save Adobe PDF inside PDF file" that is not checked by default. Ticking that checkbox will ensure that every PDF document created with Acrobat will retain the customized Adobe PDF Settings and should remain intact until the user desires to change printing preferences at printing time.

See next slide below:

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Simon5E99Author

Participant

Doe noone have any clue on how to achieve this?

Cheers!

Simon

M

markvanvaals

Participant

Super late reply.

I have the same issue, however I noticed my collegue did not. We have identical machines and the only difference being he did not have the Kyocera driver software installed and I did.

I also see reports of the exact same issue where people have Xerox driver software installed.

The location where Acrobat should be pulling this from is Printing Preferences --> Advanced --> Paper/Output, Paper Size drop down. As this is always available, regardless whether driver software is installed or not.

As for a work-around, uninstall the Kyocera software and re-install the printer using Windows dialog so it pulls more basic drivers. That way you get the simplified Printer Preferences screens and Acrobat will pick up the default paper size.

@Luke Jennings3 Hopefully this information is useful and we can get a fix for this. As it's a bit disappointing to see every forum thread end with "it's a computer setting" a.k.a. not our problem. As this affects a large customer base.

M

markv69409834

Participant

I know that I am a bit late to the party, but I too have been having a problem, when using a Kyocera printer driver, where the Adobe Acrobat Page Setup selection remains permanently stuck on letter as the default even after A4 has been selected.

I found that even when A4 is set on the Kyocera driver within Acrobat it also reverts to letter the next time it is opened.

However, I believe that I have found a solution using the Kyocera driver.

The problem has to be fixed from Windows settings. When using Windows 10, go to Settings - Devices - Printers and scanners and then select the Kyocera printer and Manage. From here I found that there are two ways to set the page size. One is within Printer properties and the other within Printing preferences. Both dialogs appear to be identical, but the one under Printer properties is called Printing defaults rather than Printing preferences and they are not linked.

My investigation proceeded as follows:

Firstly, I opened Printing preferences and changed the Print size to A4 - which showed as A4 (97%). This didn't fix the problem although it remained set (unlike doing it from within Acrobat).

By opening Printer properties - Advanced - Printing Defaults I found the other setting (which was still set to letter). I set this to A4 - showing as A4 (97%) - and tried again. The problem still remained.

I returned to the Printer defaults version of the dialog and selected Page Sizes, then A4 and OK. I now found that the Print size had changed to A4 (100%). I closed that dialog, went back to the Printing preferences version of the dialog - which still showed A4 (97%) - and did the same thing. With both dialogs now showing A4 (100%) I tried again and when I opened the pdf, and selected print, the Page setup default was showing A4.

I don't know if both dialogs have to be synched, and if not which one is fixing the problem. Logically it should be just the Printer defaults dialog. It may be that just having one of them set to A4 (100%) would work. But I have them synched at A4 (100%) and it appears to have done the trick, so I didn't investigate further.

Hopefully, this might help somebody who is still strugglng with this issue, and that something similar might apply to other problematic printer drivers.

Brian34350 is correct. You need to set the Adobe PDF Printing Preferences twice, from different tabs, from the Windows Printers & scanners section. Then it stays at A4 for subsequent days and sessions. HOWEVER, roughly every month or so, without warning, I find that all these preferences have gone back to Adobe's USA origins. Size has changed to Letter, 'View Adobe PDF results' has been ticked. 'Rely on system fonts only; do not use document fonts' has been ticked'. So I need to change back to A4 (TWICE), and untick the two boxes. Because this happens without warning, I may already have produced and emailed some PDF documents (wrongly formatted) before I become aware of the change. So the unanswered questions are:

What makes the defaults change on their own eveyr month or so? Perhaps an Adobe update?
How to prevent this happening in future?

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

I believe the default paper size is a computer setting, not an Acrobat setting. I found these links that you might find helpful:

https://answers.acrobatusers.com/Default-printer-A4-q9008.aspx#:~:text=You%20can%20set%20the%20printer,default%20page%20size%20to%20A4.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-reader/reader-default-paper-size-for-printing/td-p/6687668?page=1

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Simon5E99Author

Participant

Hi Luke,

thanks for your reply and your help.

What you suggested is true, albeit only partially. Let me explain:

The default printer paper size is indeed set to A4. This means:

The Printer does not complain every time regarding "Wrong paper selected..." but just prints the document.
The document is scaled incorrectly because acrobat assumes it will be printed on Letter and scales it accordingly. then the printer driver takes over and re-scales the document so it fits on A4 paper. Please have a look at the attached images for comparison.

This means there is a discrepancy between the system-wide default print size and the assumption acrobat makes about the format of the document. I wish to change that.. permanently.

Cheers,

Simon

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

I don't know how to fix that.

Prehaps someone else can help.

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