Printing Web pages from IE 6 in Windows XP 1

[RBH]

In recent times, there have been some printing problems related to the borders, and headers & footers, when printing out WEB pages from IE 6 in Windows XP.

I normally set the borders to 0.5" all around in the page setup window in IE. In times past, this was fine, and the complete page would print, with my designated header and footer within the printable area of the page. Lately, a small part of the right side of the page would be cut off, and this "cut off" problem displayed in the Print Preview window, so it was not due to a printer "problem".

So today, I reduced the L and R margins to 0.3". This seemed to resolve that problem. But suddenly, the header and footers have now moved out of the printable area, to the extreme top and bottom of the page. As a result, they don't appear on the printed output, except for a a "teeny" bit of the text that crosses over into the printable area.

Changing the top and bottom margins does not have an efffect upon where the header and footer are located. In a "normal" situation, such as in WordPerfect, or Word, when the top/bottom margin is changed, the locations of the header and footer change accordingly, but apparently not in printing out web pages from the web.

I've searched all over, but cannot find any path to correct this situation. Does such a path exist? The usual "setup" window to control the settings of the printout does not offer much in the way of options.

I would also like to be able to keep my L and R margins at 0.5", but as I noted above, that clips off a small amount of the right side of the page printout. There must be some settings somewhere that will allow me to fix my current problems.

When I put the page margins back to 0.5" all around, the header and footer move back into the printable area. Why that happens is a mystery. I did not change the T and B margins when I made the L & R margins 0.3". Possibly this is related to some scaling factor somwhere.

So I increased all the margins to 1". The header and footer are fine, but the page now really gets clipped on the right side

Also, a solution is to set the printout to landscape mode - that does not clip the right side, and allows the header and footer to stay within the printable area. But I don't want to print a portrait page in landscape mode.

I found a solution for my PDF995 "printer" installed on my main computer (prints to a PDF file) to resolve the header footer bit, and the chopped off right side. I set the scaling to 95% - that took care of the right side chop-off. Then I called out for a smaller paper size of 8.5X10 which was available in the setup for PDF995. The resultant PDF file was fine in all the previous problem areas. But, should I have to go through all of this??

Can someone explain these crazy behaviors to me please - and offer a more straightforward solution.

Ron Hirsch

 

[linney]

Experimenting with Page Setup and Print Preview in IE (not actually printing) it was hard to find any constant correlation between the IE settings and the following Registry Key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup

Mind you I have the added problem of my IE settings being in millimeters and the Registry being in inches. Nevertheless changing settings in IE didn't always match the settings in the Registry or vice versa.

This may suggest the various settings are coming from the Source Code of the Web Page, the Printer software or possibly a bug in IE or XP. As an example of what third party code can do try and print a Tek-Tips web page, all I could get it to print is the postings without all the surrounding bits and pieces.

You can try playing with the IE/ Tools/ Internet Options/ Accessibility and see if that makes any difference as to what prints.

Adding to the mystery is that if you delete the above Registry Key, it will automatically be replaced by Windows File Protection. Setting Deny Permissions on the Key gets rid off the Header and Footer and any Margin Settings.

Not much help here, at least I sympathize with you and did read your post.

 

[RBH]

Hi Linney,

Thanks for your efforts. I'm glad to see that I'm not crazy here. I'm no slouch at this, and it does bug me when things appear to be "screwed up" and/or don't make sense.

This situation fits both of these descriptions.

Fortunately, it's not a life threatening problem. As a last resort choice, switching to landscape printing can also always be used.

Ron

 

[RBH]

Hi Linney,

I normally use the Brother MFC8820D (laser MFC) for my web printing. I have managed to make the "shrink to 96%" setting stay in place now, and I've now obtained the full page printout, without cutoof on the right. I used margins of .5" all around, and shrink to 96% for the print size.

I don't want my color laser to shrink all its printing. But when I should want it for web printing, I'll set it at the same values, and then reset them to normal afterwards.

Ron