Word won't let me cheat the printer anymore

L

Luisa

Hello,

I have now searched for the last 6 hours after a solution to my
"little" problem and I found a lot of similar problems, but no
solutions that helped me ... can you help me?

I have a Word document with a footer that is printed 0.7 cm from the
edge. The Lexmark Z52 printer requires 1.28 cm but up until now I have
been able to cheat the printer by using a user defined paper size with
a length of 30.3 cm instead of our standard A4 size of 29.7 cm and
then just print it on standard A4.

This works just fine on my PC with Windows ME and Word 2000, but on my
colleagues PC with Windows XP the footer is not printed and if he
tryes to change the bottom margin it says that the minimum margin is
1.88 cm = 1.28 cm + the difference between 29.7 and 30.3 cm.

I have tryed to download and install the Lexmark driver for Windows XP
on his PC, but this did not solve the problem.

So my conclusion is something like:
Lexmark accepts to be cheated but Word under Windows XP does not let
me cheat ... do you know why?

Best regards,
Luisa
 
J

Jezebel

It may be that the Lexmark can actually print closer to the edge of the
paper than the margins it reports to Word; but the printer on your
colleague's PC really needs those margins and physically can't print 7mm
from the edge.
 
L

Luisa

Nope, it is the same printer bought at the same time and the problem
only appeared after he changed to Windows bloody XP.
 
J

Jezebel

Well, yes. XP users deserve what they get. MS's new technique of making the
customer do their debugging for them (would you like to report this crash to
Microsoft?) is viciously cynical, even by MS standards.
 
L

Luisa

I am not sure that it is a crash/bug in XP, surely the Lexmark driver
is also to blame ... but I don't see why XP has to act like "Big
Brother"! It's alright to give me a warning but it is not alright to
stop me.

I'll report it anyway ... thanks.
 
B

Bob S

This works just fine on my PC with Windows ME and Word 2000, but on my
colleagues PC with Windows XP the footer is not printed and if he
tryes to change the bottom margin it says that the minimum margin is
1.88 cm = 1.28 cm + the difference between 29.7 and 30.3 cm.
Click to expand...

In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, you must define custom paper sizes to
the printer before you try to set them in Word. A paper size is called
a "form" in this context.

To create a new size, try Windows | Control Panel | Printers, then
File | Server Properties | Forms tab. Use the "Create a New Form"
check box, enter the required sizes (don't try to set margins beyond
what the printer can actually print), and save the form. Once you have
done this, the new form should be available to all applications in
their Paper Size box. You may need to restart Word to get it to see
the new size.

If the new form does not show up for use by applications, you can try
the alternative method. In the Server Properties dialog, select an
existing form, modify the settings, check the box to create a new
form, change the name and save the form.

Note that the new form will only appear on the computer where it is
created. If you are creating a new form for a shared printer, create
it on the print server computer.

Bob S
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

AFAICS, there are many sizes of forms defined here that are not available in
the Page Setup dialog. I can define new custom sizes in my printer's
Properties, but there's a limit to how many sizes I can have. If I want to
add more than (I think) three user-defined sizes, I have to sacrifice one of
the built-in ones--or at least that's the impression I've gotten (perhaps
I'm just not doing it right).
 
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