A PDF that looks right on screen and prints wrong is not a printer problem. It is a mismatch between what the file says and what the paper is.
Page size versus paper size
This is the first thing to check and the cause of most complaints about margins, scaling and cut-off edges.
A PDF page has an intrinsic size written into the file. A4 is 210 × 297 mm; US Letter is 216 × 279 mm. They are neither the same width nor the same height, so a document laid out for one and printed on the other cannot fit without either scaling or clipping.
| Size | mm | inches | Used in |
|---|---|---|---|
| A4 | 210 × 297 | 8.27 × 11.69 | Most of the world |
| US Letter | 216 × 279 | 8.5 × 11 | US, Canada, Mexico |
| US Legal | 216 × 356 | 8.5 × 14 | US legal documents |
| A3 | 297 × 420 | 11.69 × 16.54 | Posters, spreads |
| A5 | 148 × 210 | 5.83 × 8.27 | Booklets, notebooks |
A4 printed on Letter loses 18 mm from the bottom or scales to 96%. Letter printed on A4 gains a margin on one axis and loses 6 mm on the other. Neither is a fault — it is two standards that were never designed to interoperate.
Scaling is lying to you
Print dialogs default to "Fit to printable area" or "Shrink oversized pages", and both silently resize your document.
That is helpful for a page that would otherwise clip, and destructive when the size matters. Anything printed to measure — a form, a technical drawing, a photo at a specified dimension, a document with a signature block positioned exactly — must be printed at Actual size or 100%.
If you set actual size and content disappears off the edge, the page really is larger than the paper. Scaling was hiding that, not solving it. The fix is the right paper or a re-laid-out document, not a different print setting.
The unprintable margin
Almost no consumer printer prints to the edge of the sheet. There is a hardware margin — typically 3 to 5 mm on the sides, and often more at the trailing edge where the rollers grip.
Content inside that band is not printed. It is not clipped by the software; the print head physically cannot reach it. This is why a design that goes right to the edge on screen arrives with a white border, and why the bottom of a full-bleed page is usually the worst affected.
- Keep anything that matters 10 mm from every edge. That clears every consumer printer with room to spare.
- For genuine full bleed you need a commercial printer, which prints oversized and trims. That requires bleed marks and an oversized page, not just artwork to the edge.
- Borderless mode on inkjets works by scaling the page up slightly, so it crops a few millimetres off all four sides. Fine for a photo, wrong for a document.
Blank pages, missing text and the wrong font
These three have the same root cause more often than not: fonts that were not embedded in the file.
When a PDF references a font it does not contain, the reader substitutes something available locally. On screen you may not notice, because your machine has the font. The printer — or the recipient's machine — may not, and the substitute has different metrics, so lines reflow, text overlaps, and occasionally a page renders empty.
Check the document properties in any reader: the Fonts tab lists every font and says whether it is embedded. If something says "not embedded", re-export from the source with font embedding turned on. In Word that is Options → Save → Embed fonts in the file; most design tools embed by default.
Colour that comes out wrong
Two separate problems get reported as the same thing.
Nothing prints in colour. Usually the driver is set to greyscale, or the printer is in an economy mode, or one cartridge is empty and the printer has silently fallen back. Check the driver settings before blaming the file.
Colours print but look wrong. This is a profile mismatch. Screens are RGB and additive; printers are CMYK and subtractive. Saturated blues, bright greens and neon anything simply do not exist in CMYK and get mapped to the nearest printable colour, which is duller.
Nothing in the PDF can fix that gap — it is a property of ink. If colour accuracy matters, ask the print shop for their profile and soft-proof against it. For everyday printing, expect screen colours to arrive about 15% less vivid and design accordingly.
When the file is simply too heavy
A very large PDF can fail at the printer rather than in the reader. Printers have limited memory, and a page carrying a 300 MB image or thousands of vector paths can time out, print partially, or emit a memory error.
Transparency is the usual culprit. Drop shadows, soft masks and blend modes have to be flattened before printing, and complex transparency produces enormous intermediate files during that flattening.
Compressing at 200–300 DPI usually resolves it without visible loss at print size — the approach is in how to compress a PDF without losing quality. If it still fails, print in ranges: pages 1–10, then 11–20. That isolates the offending page, and Split PDF makes the ranges quickly.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my PDF print smaller than it should?
Because the print dialog is set to "Fit to printable area" or "Shrink oversized pages", which is the default in most readers. Set Actual size or 100%. If content then runs off the edge, the page genuinely is larger than the paper and scaling was masking it.
Why is there a white border I did not design?
Consumer printers have a hardware margin of roughly 3-5mm that the print head cannot reach, often more at the trailing edge. Keep anything important 10mm from every edge. True edge-to-edge printing needs a commercial printer that prints oversized and trims.
Why does my text look different when printed?
The fonts were probably not embedded, so the printer substituted something else with different metrics — which reflows lines and can overlap text. Check the Fonts tab in document properties; anything marked "not embedded" needs re-exporting with embedding enabled.
Why will my PDF not print in colour?
Usually the driver is set to greyscale or an economy mode, or a cartridge is empty and the printer has fallen back silently. Check driver settings first. If colour prints but looks dull, that is the RGB to CMYK gap and no file setting will close it.
Why do some pages come out blank?
Most often missing embedded fonts, or transparency the driver failed to flatten. Try printing that page alone — if it works in isolation, the job was too heavy for the printer's memory. Compressing the file usually resolves it.
A4 or Letter — does it matter?
Yes. A4 is 210 × 297mm and Letter is 216 × 279mm, so neither dimension matches. A4 printed on Letter loses 18mm off the bottom or scales to 96%. Set the page size to match the paper the document will actually be printed on.