Pages are printed upside down in InDesign

[bartW]

I'm working in InDesign for several years now, but what happens this week is very weird. Some of the pages in my InDesign CC documents are printed upside down. In one document it's the second page, in another document it's page 6 and page 7 (of 10). Very strange, but I can't find what's wrong ... It appears in one-side printing and double-side printing. Who can help me out?

[Randy Hagan]

Hard tellin' not knowin' ... but we can use a process of elimination to isolate the problem, then come up with a workable solution.

1. May go without saying, but to get it out of the way I will: all the pages in your InDesign documents are right-side up, right?
2. Since they likely are, print a troubled file to Adobe PDF, using the output settings for your Mac/Windows Adobe PDF driver. Open the PDF — do they all appear right-side up? Now print the PDF — do all the pages now print right-side up? If so, we can start isolating it to InDesign interacting with the print driver. The bonus is we've got an immediate workaround which gets you past your problem while further investigating the cause. If the problem continues ...
3. Print a long word processing file. It's unlikely, but you want to confirm that other programs don't print upside-down before you ...
4. Find another output device, whether it's in your shop or out at some vendor quick-print or office supply store. Print the PDF, then the InDesign file. If you have to take it out of house/outside your network, don't forget to package the InDesign file before sending it out to ensure you don't introduce other problems trying to print it out.

The results will let you isolate the problem between InDesign interacting with the printer driver, InDesign creating bad output files and the printer itself. If you could, please let us know the results and we can help isolate the problem with you and possibly help you correct it. There are lots of smart people around who can lend a hand.

Please let us know what you find out, and good luck.

Randy

[bartW]

Hi Randy,

thank you for your quick answer.

I've exported a 10 page InDesign file to PDF and printed that PDF file ... and page 4, 6 and 7 are upside down! So InDesign is not really the problem here? It's very strange because it's the first time the problem occurs since I've started working here in October 2018 in the office.

Bart

[Randy Hagan]

Actually, it might still be InDesign. I'd print a long word processing file and see how it outputs (to be sure), then try to print the PDF and the InDesign file on another device. Do you have another printer in your shop? How are you connected to the printer you're using now?

We may not have the answer (yet) but we're narrowing down the field of possibilities.

Randy

[John Mensinger]

bartW  wrote

I've exported a 10 page InDesign file to PDF and printed that PDF file ... and page 4, 6 and 7 are upside down!

Okay wait now . . . were those pages upside-down in the PDF when viewed on your screen? If not, and you sent 10 right-side-up PDF pages to your printer, and it printed 3 of them upside-down, I don't see a way to blame anything but the printer. Does it have a duplexer?

[bartW]

I printed 10 right-side-up pdf pages to the printer. The printer has a duplexer, but it was not activated for this 10-page print. (However, when I print double-sided there are also pages printed upside down.) I'm the only one in the office having this problem. Also I'm the only one in the office working on an iMac.

[Randy Hagan]

Are you the only one printing to that printer? Is it tied to the network and other people can print to it just fine? Have you tried printing other long documents from other applications to that printer as we suggested earlier? And are you the only person using a Mac in an all-Windows shop or are you the only person using an iMac and other Mac-based systems on the network are fine?

It looks like you're down to the printer driver. Did the PDF file actually show pages 4, 6 and 7 upside down, or just print them that way? What's the brand and model of the printer?

You may have to chase down the problem from your printer supplier/manufacturer to get a solution.

[Peter Villevoye]

Are the pages all the same size ? If not, are some views maybe temporarily rotated for easier screen reading ?

Temporarily deleting all content from some or all pages and replacing it with a simple full-page text frame (just for the sake of testing) might rule corrupt content in or out of the diagnose.

[ConquerGP]

Ive encountered this problem many times and have a few solutions

1: If you have placed a scanned pdf and corrected its orientation in indesign back to portrait, your printers will interpret the original orientation of the pdf and rotate the page

Solution. Edit/Orient the pdf in Illustrator and resave, if it still persist export a hires tiff and replace in indesign

2: if you have created/copied vector shapes from illustrator into indesign and these vectors are broken/2 nodes not connected and then flip or transformed it also causes the printers OCR (i think thats what its called) to misinterpret the vector data and that leads to page flipping

Solution: make sure you vectors are clean unflipped shapes and effects saved as eps's and the placed in indesign

And if none of this work then start a new indesign file move section by section of the old indesign file into the new, print testing as you go along to find the problem areas and reset and recreate those.

Thirdly as mentioned above it could be an outdated printer driver that has conflicts with the network Mac language interpreter