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Known Participant
July 8, 2016
Question

My pdf won't print in grayscale

  • July 8, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 6275 views

I found a free daily calendar PDF online that I downloaded and I like to print it out to prioritize and schedule the tasks I need to work on.

It happens to be in color, which I don't need, and I don't want to waste colored ink, so I always check the "print grayscale" box in the print dialog box.

I've never had problems with it before; it always printed in grayscale with no problem, but a few days ago, the preview in the print dialog didn't change when I checked that box. I thought maybe it was some kind of glitch and it might print grayscale anyway, but no. It printed color and prints color every time.

I tried to look around in advanced settings, thinking maybe there was some other box that needed to be checked or unchecked, but I couldn't find any.

Am I missing something? Has anyone else ever had a similar problem?

I realize I could probably open the PDF in Photoshop and change it permanently to grayscale there, but I kind of would like to figure out how to fix this in case I run into the problem again.

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1 reply

Adorobat
Community Manager
Community Manager
July 8, 2016

Hi ,

Could you please tell what Operating system do you have- Windows/Mac?

Have you tried to print other document?

Please perform the steps which are given in below links:

Print in black and white using Acrobat or Reader

https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/how-to-convert-pdf-files-to-grayscale

Let us know if you face any issue.

Thank You!

Shivam

Known Participant
July 8, 2016

I'm sorry, I didn't think to include that information.

I'm on a PC running Windows 7.

I just tried it with a different PDF and the preview in the print dialog box did turn to grayscale when I checked print to grayscale and it did print it that way.

I checked, and it seems the documents were opening in Acrobat Reader DC, so I tried opening them in Acrobat XI instead, but had the same problem with the document that keeps printing in color.

I tried the instructions in your first link, but the dialog box shown there doesn't look like either of the dialog boxes I see in Reader DC or Acrobat XI. The Advanced button is on the top of my dialog boxes, not the bottom, and there doesn't seem to be anything there to change it to grayscale. When I click on Color Management, it looks as if it's set to composite gray, but as you see, the preview is still color.

I'll upload a screenshot of the advanced print dialog I'm seeing in Acrobat XI:

Adorobat
Community Manager
Community Manager
July 8, 2016

Have you tried second link?