MS Word wide margin

[AndyFug]

I have discovered that when printing to PDF using MS Word, PDF-XChange Printer Lite appears to be adding additional margin width. This is hopefully demonstrated in the attached PDF (screen grab just below). This is a combined PDF document showing the result of two separate print jobs from the same file (but just edited the text for clarity/identification). The first page was printed using the PDF-XChange Lite printer driver, and the second was printed using the "Microsoft Print to PDF" driver.

The document's margins are set to 2.54cm in both instances (although the border shown sits just outside that). The issue is present on various documents and sadly not just this one. I've tried reverting to 'auto' on the printer driver settings for page & sheet sizes, but it makes not difference.

Apologies if I'm missing something obvious, but I feel like I've exhausted all the available settings.

OS: Windows 10
Word version: 2211 (Build 15831.20208)
PDF-XChange Printer Lite version: v9.2 (Build 359)

Original Word document (wouldn't allow me to attach):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/96zv8keg039ze ... .docx?dl=0

pdf_xchange_border_issue_2022-12-22.pdf

(356.23 KiB) Downloaded 80 times

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello AndyFug,

Welcome to our forums.
Usually the Lite (and Standard) printers will take in any input from the application that prints to them, and use that to create a PDF file with the desired conente.
So I suspect the scaling is on the side of Word rather than on ours. Can you please also share the actual .docx file so that we can do some tests here on our end with the same source?

Kind regards,
Stefan

[AndyFug]

Thanks for your reply. The file is under the Dropbox link I included at the end of the original post. I couldn't upload a .docx and nor could I format a link correctly (probably because it was my first post?)

As I state, the same file prints fine on Microsoft Print to PDF driver, which makes me think it is driver related rather than app related, however I understand there are several layers to this.

I look forward to your feedback.

A

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello AndyFug,

Apologies for missing the link in the initial post!
Yes - our forums only allow .pdf and .zip archives to be attached and links in posts need admin approval to show up as links!

I've been unable to reproduce your issue with the current latest build of our products (366), and your file was created with build 359 of the driver. Can you please try to update to build 366 and let us know if that is still happening for you?

I printed to our "Standard" printer - but the code behind Standard and Lite is the same so you should get the same results!
These are the settings in Word:

And these were my printer properties (you should see less entries on the left - but that page should be the same for you):

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Andy,

I see the same as you with the Lite printer, no matter what settings I use I get the wrong margin. I will need to consult the dev team about this.

In the meanwhile you can drag the Word file directly into the Editor and the conversion does retain the page size. Does it look right to you? The PDF-XChange Standard Printer also created the right size for me. See attached, but I could not get it to do so in Lite.

Can you test opening the W.docx file directly in the Editor? It does an "on the fly" conversion and doesn't use the print output of Word as a starting point. I am keen to hear if that works better for you.

pdf_xchange_border_issue_2022-12-22_PDFXEdit.pdf

(74.27 KiB) Downloaded 72 times

pdf_xchange_border_issue_2022-12-22_StdAddin.pdf

(174.12 KiB) Downloaded 73 times

[AndyFug]

Thank you both for looking into this so promptly.

I can confirm that dragging the .docx file into PDF-XChange Editor produces the correct output.

This is a little inconvenient because I have to close MS Word every time I wish to perform this operation (it doesn't like accessing the file while Word has the same file open), but I appreciate there is at least a workaround.

Interestingly I receive a warning suggesting that my Office is not activated (which is not the case):

It does appear to work after dismissing that message, but something else a bit odd going on.

I am running editor version 9.2 build 359.0.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Thanks for testing that.

I have passed on the Word file to the team to see what we can do about the Lite Printer and this issue.

When you hit "Yes" on that dialogue, the file does convert with all it's content. Right? You should be able to hit "Remember my choice" on there and forget the message.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Andy,

can you check this setting for me in Word please:

You have A4 explicitly set, but Word may be sending a letter page even though your document is A4.

Setting A4 rather than Auto in the printer forces the result to A4, but if Word is sending letter then we need to fit letter onto an A4 page. Letter and A4 have different aspect ratios, so the only way to do this is to either keep the aspect ratio as is in the original, or deform the content by changing the aspect ratio.

If you really do intend having an A4 document and you are in the US or Canada you need to turn that Word option off. Word will otherwise take your location and understand that one can't easily buy A4 paper and set that option to convert the pages before printing.

I am keen to hear if turning Word's scale content for A4 and 8.5 x 11 off results in the A4 PDF with the correct margins when printing to Lite.

[AndyFug]

Hi Paul,

Good news. The scaling setting resolved the issue in this instance. I think you may have called out the wrong setting in your annotated screen grab, but I can confirm that the following settings resulted in the printer driver replicating the margins correctly:

I am in the UK and only ever work with ISO paper sizes (A4, A3 etc), so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I'd ever need this setting.

I assume there is still something to resolve with the Lite driver if it is behaving differently from other printer drivers, but for now, it looks like this should work for me. Thank you. Let me know if there are any other tests you'd like me to perform to help get to the bottom of your issue.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Understood Andy,

Good eye on the screen grab, it is satisfying to know that logic and rational thought are not entirely lost to the world and that errors like mine do not cause thiunbgs to screech to a halt...

Since you are in the UK I would have expected that Word setting to be off for you by default to be honest. I am not sure that there is anything to change in Lite then because setting that in Word should bean that Lite is respecting the paper size sent.

cheers

[AndyFug]

Thanks Paul,

Interestingly I discovered my OS locale was set to USA for some reason, so that may be why it had been ticked. Changing the locale to UK didn't untick the box, so it may have been a global setting established at the point when I installed MS Office. Who knows.

The only thing I would ask is why this MS Word setting overides the page size/scale in your printer driver but not the 'Microsoft Print to PDF' one? I'm asking that without truly understanding what the setting is meant to do, so I can imagine there is a world where your driver is respecting the setting correctly and the MS driver is not, but just thought that might be worth exploring.

Thanks again for your prompt help with all of this.

A

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Andy,

good question, and to be honest I am not entirely sure I can explain what Microsoft choose to do.

I believe the purpose of the setting is simple to make printing documents easy for those that flow. Word documents have a linear underlying structure where the position of every element on a page us relative to the other content. PDFs are strictly coordinate based, no elements are "aware" of what is around them, they do not resize as well. A4 and Letter are different aspect ratios, so scaling these to fit will always involve either a change in the document aspect ratio or a reflow of the text to fit the page.

I suspect MS are recognizing that fact by not performing that change on PDF documents, though that is more guess than fact. If it is really important to you I could ask one of the devs their thoughts on why MS are doing this.

Cheers

[becritical]

I am having the same problem, I went through the suggestions in this thread and checked all the settings but the margins when I use PDF-Xchange Lite are always wider than the margin set in the word file. What could be the issue?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello becritical,

Did you check and ensure that there is no conversion between Letter and A4 done on Word's side?
Can you please prepare and share with us one Word file and the resulting PDF?
Creating a file with just "Loren Ipsum" text inside is perfectly fine as a sample.

Kind regards,
Stefan