Tiny packing lists and address labels? Why?

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

I wonder whether anyone else has had this experience, and whether you learned anything about it.

I had to print a couple of packing lists and address labels today. All of the printouts looked right in the print dialog preview, but they came off the printer with tiny blocks of printing in the middle of otherwise empty pages. It was as though the print margins had been set to extremely wide values.

I measured the printed area of a packing list. It was 4.25 inches wide. On a normal packing list it is 6.875 inches wide.

I thought the browser's margins had somehow been changed, but when I tried to change them back I couldn't find the (Firefox) File > Print Setup dialog. I still can't. I don't know whether this is a malfunction or a user interface change. According to the documentation I found online, the dialog still exists and it is opened from "a dropdown menu in the upper left corner of the screen," which may or may not mean the File menu, but the command isn't there, and I see no other options.

I finally got the pages to print approximately right by writing them to PDFs and manipulating them in Acrobat. It took me about an hour to figure out how to do that for four pages.

I tried printing test pages with other applications, and they came out normal.

I tried printing a packing list from eBay later... and it came out normal.

I'm mystified, and not a little angry. What if this happens every time I have to ship something?

[bamorris]

Hard to troubleshoot without knowing what type of printer you are using.

1. Printer type

2. Paper size selected

3. Actual paper size

4. Label size

There are quite a few ways for print jobs to get mangled. Printing something portrait vs landscape. Sometimes it can be as simple as selecting or deselecting "Fit to printable area".

But without knowing what your setup is, it's difficult to troubleshoot. 

[dirk12955]

I know this isn't going to help.    I just packed some orders and all turned 

out as normal.    Invoices,  address labels,   Shipping labels all OK.   

[shipscript]

@bitsofsiliconvalley 

The newer Firefox (shown here on Windows 10) puts the preview and setup screen together on the "Print..." function, but it is easy to miss scrolling down to the additional settings.  Next time this happens, check to see whether your print settings were modified by some prior application.

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

bamorris, the answers to your questions are:

1.  Printer type: Brother MFC-J6920DW.

2. Paper size selected: 8 1/2 x 11.

3. Actual paper size: 8 1/2 x 11.

4. Label size: 2-up borderless adhesive labels on 8 1/2 x 11. Or 8 1/2 x 11 plain paper. It happened with both. I can't imagine why you want to know, though. I don't think even state-of-the-art scary-smart printers can detect the size of the labels loaded into them.

shipscript, I know all about the scrolling settings. I generally don't use them because they have a different UI in every application. I go straight to the printer's property box, which is the same regardless of what application I'm using. I did that as soon as I encountered the problem, and found nothing wrong.

I didn't print a complete list of settings to post here in case I missed something. If it happens again, I will. (It hasn't happened since my OP because I've been too busy to list anything.)