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Inspiring
March 7, 2012
Answered

Page not centered when printing

  • March 7, 2012
  • 6 replies
  • 76647 views

Okay...

So i'm running Indesign CS4 on an I-mac.

i'm on OS 10.6.8.

I have a canon pixma pro9000 printer.

and for some reason whenever i print from indesign, i can't get the page to be centered.

which it never used to do until a month or so ago.

photoshop, word, acrobat... they print fine.

but my indesign won't work.

i swear i've tried EVERYTHING.

it won't center.

i've got it on 'centered' in the page position pull down in set up.

i've tried the page related printer settings.

and the basic page set up, too.

but i still get a big gutter on the left side of the page.

so i tried hooking the printer up to my wife's imac.

which has the same stats as above.

and it prints the same file DEAD CENTER.

i've tried looking for differences in the set-ups but can't find any!

So...

I figure somethings corrupt with my indesign.

so i uninstall.

reinstall.

and...

get the same off-center printing.

although i thought it was odd that after i re-installed it didn't ask me for my serial #...

so maybe it didn't uninstall completely and kept whatever ugly printing preferences are haunting me

so that's my story.

i wanna scream.

i have no idea what to do next.

any help would be madly appreciated.

t

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer warburtonlabs

i think i found the problem.

in the printer preferences there's a pulldown menu that has a 'quality and media' section.

the paper was not set to 'plain paper' so i switched it to that and now it's printing correctly.

now i KNOW i had it on plain paper before and things still weren't working.

perhaps once i tossed the preferences and set it back to plain paper

that was the magical combination?

let's hope it stays that way.

thank you for ALL your help.

it was much appreciated!

t

6 replies

Participating Frequently
April 28, 2024

I was having the same problem and this worked for me:  Print, choose Setup from the column on the left, then Page Position, and choose either Upper Left, Centered Horizontally, Centered Vertically, or Centered.  Good luck!

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
April 28, 2024

This is a very old topic, but it's a perennial problem/question. The bottom line is that InDesign has very little control over how content hits an actual sheet of paper, other than indirect instructions to the printer driver/controller. Things like centering content and scaling it from "exact size" to "fit sheet" and all other variations are almost 100% controlled by the printer driver and its setup/control panel... even if for some reason ID is the only app with faulty output. That doesn't mean ID is faulty; it means all other apps have their print settings — to and through the print driver — set correctly.

Participant
July 9, 2013

for anyone still having this problem... i was too, exactly the same. couldn't figure it out. nothing here worked. today i selected borderless printing with plain paper, and it warned me not to but i'm a rebel so i did it anyways, and lo and behold... it prints properly like that. solved. hope it ends your frustration.

Participating Frequently
November 8, 2016

11.08.16 Here's how I fixed it - I'm using Adobe CC.

File/Print and then look for the box that says "General" on the top. Scroll down to "Setup" and then look in the "Options" box on the right. Then change the pull down menu that says "Page Position" to "Centered". Mine was set to "upper left" until I made the change.

warburtonlabsAuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
March 9, 2012

i think i found the problem.

in the printer preferences there's a pulldown menu that has a 'quality and media' section.

the paper was not set to 'plain paper' so i switched it to that and now it's printing correctly.

now i KNOW i had it on plain paper before and things still weren't working.

perhaps once i tossed the preferences and set it back to plain paper

that was the magical combination?

let's hope it stays that way.

thank you for ALL your help.

it was much appreciated!

t

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 8, 2012

And verify that all the settings in the dialogs are the same when you try to print from your computer and your wife's. If it works one place, it should be working in both.

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 7, 2012

THis sort of symptom is typical of corrupt preferences, which are not automatically removed when you reinstall. See Replace Your Preferences

Inspiring
March 8, 2012

mr. spier, i was SO hoping your idea would work!

i figured that corrupt preferences HAD to be the problem and i couldn't wait to get home to try it!

but it didn't work.

so i tried it again.

and it still didn't work.

ugh.

any other ideas?

or is my machine haunted?

sooper triple huge thanks to you and manish for helping so far!

Inspiring
March 8, 2012

This isn't a solution so much as a way to get it to work until you find one, but I can't print to my cheapie printer from InDesign, so I export to PDF and print that to the printer, which works for me. Just a band-aid, but it could get you over the hump for now.

Inspiring
March 7, 2012

What happen when you make the print pdf from indesign, does the pdf is also misaligned.

Inspiring
March 7, 2012

when i export it to a pdf it's centered correctly.

Inspiring
March 7, 2012

What happen when you make the PDF thourgh the Print option.

Go to file>print

choose printer as Adobe pdf or postscript and then check.