what does outside the printable area mean in Word

[Kathy]

I am having an issue with my document in Word. When I exit the
Page Setup dialog, I get the message about margins being outside the
printable area. I am creating and printing an 8.5x11 document in portrait.
When I go to print the document on my HP Deskjet D4200, I also
get the message that margins of Section 1 are outside the printable area of
the page. Why is this happening? If I ignore themessage and go ahead and
print, everything prints fine? How can I get rid of this annoying issue?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/BottomsDontPrint.htm

An easy way to see what the printable area is is to go to the Margins tab of
Page Setup and set all the margins to 0. When you click OK, Word will tell
you that one or more margins are outside the printable area and offer to fix
them. Accept the offer, note the settings, and then Cancel out of the
dialog.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Most printers cannot physically print all the way to the edge of the paper.
There usually is an edge boundary of between 1/4 and 1/2 inch in which the
printer cannot physically put ink or toner. It's a limitation of some
printers' capabilities. These areas are predefined for the printer drivers
that Windows uses. Sometimes, these are on the conservative size. E.g.,
Windows might think that it cannot print within 1/3 of an inch when in fact
the real boundary is 1/4 of an inch. In such cases, Word says you're outside
the printable area when you really aren't. Other times, Word is correct, and
printing will be clipped. Getting to know the actual limits of your printer
can sometimes let you safely ignore Word's warning. Not knowing the real
limits, however, can sometimes let you waste both paper and ink.

 

[Terry Farrell]

To add to those answers, I find that if I create a sheet of labels using
something like the 3 x 7 labels (Avery L7160s) it prints fine first time
without any error messages. If I save a sheet as a template for reuse, I
always get the error messages because in reality, the margins of the tables
(labels are only preset tables) are outside the printable area of my
printer. This doesn't really matter because the table borders are
non-printing borders and the cell boundary setting just takes the printable
text inside the printable area. Somehow, the Label wizard is able to
suppress the error message.

Terry Farrell

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'll second that. That's why I often suggest that users create N-up
documents as label descriptions rather than constructing tables by hand. But
I don't think I get the error message even when I save a label document.

Another consideration (following up on Herb's suggestion) is that Word will
tell you the text is outside the printable area if the line spacing
(leading) allowed for the font extends beyond the printable area. This is
especially critical at large font sizes. So, for example, if you have a
0.25" top margin and have, say, 36-pt text (with Single spacing) on the top
line, the tops of the tallest letters may be well over 0.25" from the top of
the page, but you'll still get the warning if the unprintable area is 0.3".

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org