How to Fix Misalignment Issues in Duplex Printing

[ariotstorm]

About a year ago, files that I have long printed as booklets without any issues began to print misaligned. It doesn't matter which printer: from the home office Xerox Work Center 6515 to the Cannon V7, ALL Indesign files print misaligned back to front. I have to go in and manually set the odd pages to an off set by trial and error. It's frustrating, especially because this was not an issue in the past. I've printed the same file hundreds of times with no problems.

The only way, it seems, to defeat this problem is to pay to have my book printed by an outside printer, effectively killing my home business. It costs $8 per book for a book that sells at $10. The printer charges a set up fee per title. I suspect they're using the Jobmaster program. No misalignment issues were reported to me, however I'm told it's a pain to set the books up for printing.

What has changed and how di I fix this costly issue?

<Title renamed by MOD>

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

When was the last time you've done service on those printers? 

If you have misalignment - then rollers need to be replaced. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Just an aside, but have you worked out your actual print cost on those?  You are probably paying more per copy than you think, since few SOHO printers have bulk-priced consumables. Just sayin'.

[rob day]

Hi @ariotstorm , Does the Print Booklet>Preview show the printer spreads centered on the Paper Size? Print Booklet>Print Settings>Setup>Page Position is set to centered? If that’s the case it would have to be a print driver software setting, which you would access via the Print>Printer... button in this capture:

[leo.r]

What are your versions of InDesign and the operating system? Do you think that the problem started after a software/hardware upgrade? 

[ariotstorm]

Hi Hi,

The problem began a year ago, after an Adobe update, I think. I'm on a Mac running Sonoma. My Adobe is 2024. I am slow to update my computers software because it may knockparts of my studio off. But this issue is beyond just my studio. It's happening in the art college where I work as well. One day everything was fine. Then suddenly (just in time for senior projects) everything form an 8-pages booklet to a whole novel is printing misaligned. I have 2 laser copiers one a Brother, one a Xerox and both presented the issue. The Canon V6, now the V7 has the same issue. People think it's a hardware problem, but I'm not of the same opinion. Something isn't being communicated. 

I manually offset an art book and it printed perfectly aligned, but that was only a 50-pages book. No one has the time to do an entire novel. No one should have to when it was printing just fine before 2023. 

[rob day]

Does it happen if you try printing 2 pages from the regular Print dialog? Do the 2 pages backup aligned?

[leo.r]

I'm on a Mac running Sonoma. My Adobe is 2024

By ariotstorm

Just in case: are your Sonoma and InDesign updated to the latest versions?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

At the risk of sounding obvious, it would seem that some printing default changed  — in ID, in the OS and perhaps in the print driver/s. So "just hit print" has a different default result. Instead of looking at a workaround (manually shifting the pages), look through all of the relevant page positioning settings to see if one restores the former print alignment.

The long run solution, of course, would be to adjust each project to print correctly, using defaults, using whatever the new 'normal' is.

In general, InDesign's booklet printing is not well regarded, and most who do booklet/imposed printing use Acrobat instead. You might try that process as a better/long-term approach.

[rob day]

I just checked Print Booklet in CC2024 on MacOS Ventura and don’t have any problems centering the printer spread on the page.

When I print to my cheap Brother Laserprinter (no duplex feature) there’s no problem printing the spreads centered. Could you show your Print Booklet Preview and Print Setup? If the Preview shows the page centered like below, I would say the problem is mechanical or a setting in the print driver software, not InDesign’s Print Setup.

[Jesse21787167earm]

My students are complaining of the same thing. Ricoh technicians have told me it is normal to have misaligned front and backs of pages due to the nature of duplex printing but I have students swearing up and down that they never had problems until about a year ago! What gives?!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

My students are complaining of the same thing. Ricoh technicians have told me it is normal to have misaligned front and backs of pages due to the nature of duplex printing but I have students swearing up and down that they never had problems until about a year ago! What gives?!

By Jesse21787167earm

How big is the misalignment?

What model of the printer?

Paper - what kind, weight, finish, etc.?

Which tray - built-in, closest to the printing mechanism - or the bottom one in the additional stand?

When was the last time the printer was professionally serviced - cleaned, had rollers replaced, paper path re-aligned, etc.?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Maybe not helpful, and not direct, but —

• Duplex printing has always been a weak point for SOHO printers. The print management tends to be glitchy, and as the paper path/rollers wear, the flip cycle gets sloppy. If the problem is "misalignment" it may just be mechanical wear over a year ago.
• InDesign's booklet printing feature is not one of its strongest. The usual recommendation is to export to PDF and let Acrobat handle the job — but there are reports that doesn't always work well, either.
• There are just enough reports like this to make me conclude that changes to ID, OS printer support and specific printer drivers occasionally get far enough out of step that complex operations like booklet pagination/printing just don't work right. Nothing short of a set of updates to bring everything back into harmony fixes it. But, of course, making sure the print drivers are up to date and have any patches for ID/OS changes would be a first step.