Troubleshooting
How to Print a PDF Correctly
Fix the print problems that waste paper — wrong scale, cut-off margins, missing form data, and pages that come out in the wrong order.
Most PDF printing problems come from four settings, and knowing which one to reach for saves the ritual of printing a test page, finding it wrong, and printing another.
The four settings that matter
| Setting | What it fixes |
|---|---|
| Scale: Fit to printable area | Content cut off at the edges |
| Scale: Actual size | Documents that must print at exact dimensions |
| Orientation: Auto | Landscape pages in a portrait document |
| Print as image | Pages that will not render or print corrupted |
Fit to printable area is the right default. Printers cannot print to the very edge of the paper, so a document designed to fill an A4 page loses a few millimetres all round unless it is scaled slightly.
Common problems
The edges are cut off
Set the scale to fit the printable area. If the document was designed with bleed for commercial printing, this is expected and a home printer cannot reproduce it.
Everything is tiny in the middle of the page
The document page size does not match the paper — usually A4 content on US Letter or the reverse. Set the paper size correctly rather than letting it scale.
Form answers do not print
Field appearances are not being generated. Flatten the document and the values become part of the page.
Annotations do not print
Enable "Document and markups" in the print dialogue, or flatten the annotations first.
Pages come out in the wrong order
Reverse order printing is on, or the printer stacks face-up. It is a printer setting rather than a document problem.
Double-sided printing
Choose long-edge binding for portrait documents and short-edge for landscape — the wrong one prints every second page upside down. If your printer has no duplex mode, print the odd pages, reload, and print the even pages in reverse.
Booklets and multiple pages per sheet
Multiple pages per sheet is the easy way to halve paper use on a document you only need to read. Booklet printing reorders pages so a folded stack reads correctly — useful, and worth testing on four pages before committing to sixty.
Do it now
Rotate PDF
Rotate PDF pages to any angle. It runs in this browser tab — your file is not uploaded anywhere.
Open Rotate PDFFrequently asked questions
Why does my PDF print smaller than it should?+
The paper size does not match the document, or scaling is set to fit. Set the paper size correctly and choose actual size.
Why do my form entries not print?+
Field appearances are not rendering. Flatten the document first.
What is "print as image"?+
It rasterises each page before sending it. Slower and lower quality, but it works when normal printing fails.
How do I print double-sided without a duplex printer?+
Print odd pages, reload the stack, then print even pages in reverse order.