SOLVED Printer prints everything at 60%

[TrainableMan]

OK I have a problem I need to get resolved in a couple hours so hopefully somebody is out there.

I was at a voter website yesterday and I printed out my candidates and there was an option to shrink it to fit on a page so I set it to 60% and it worked great. But now today EVERYTHING I print is still printing at 60% and I need to generate some shipping labels which are cute in miniature but not practical for actual use.

I have looked through properties when I print and the only option is scale to page which is set. Anybody know where I can find this to set it back to 100%? HP Deskjet F2210.

I'm on phone with HP and I don't think they know either. They had me use the copier feature and that printed full size but they couldn't find a solution.

History clears when I close my browser so I can't even remember the voter website

I'm printing from Firefox, maybe it's a feature of the browser? ... going to try IE. Update: Very weird, I printed a Sample in IE and that worked fine but when I reprint the actual shipping label it still comes out small. Reprinted it as Landscape which takes 2 pages but it's a little bigger, maybe enough to use.

Guess I'm going to the post office to see if this smaller version is functional.

Still please, if you have an idea, post it as I do need to get this resolved in the long run.

 

[Digerati]

but when I reprint the actual shipping label it still comes out small.

Hmmm, it sounds like the label was resized and then saved as a small image.

What about printing a Word or Notepad document? Test pages from Windows control panel?

Have you rebooted your machine? The printer?

 

[TrainableMan]

At the time I was afraid to close the page I was on but I have since found that I can pull up an option to return & reprint. So I did reboot last night and a web page seemed to print fine. I also just printed the test page from control panel as you suggested and it printed the right size, though now I have another problem albeit one I know how to resolve ... I'm running out of ink.

I think I'm alright but until the next time I actually need to print another shipping label I won't be absolutely sure.

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

[Digerati]

Glad you got it sorted out.

 

[TrainableMan]

Afraid it isn't sorted out. Still printing at 60%.

I was able to find the voting website where I think the issue started but because the election was over I couldn't print the list of candidates any longer, it merely had the current polling percentages.

 

[Digerati]

So this only happens when printing webpages with FF, and IE sort of works. What about Chrome?

Word?

 

[TrainableMan]

Actually I'm not sure what exactly happened in IE. Once and only once, when I printed the SAMPLE it printed fine but then when I printed the actual shipping label it printed 60%, repeated test yesterday and now even the sample prints 60%.

I ordered new ink but that won't arrive till Saturday or Tuesday so I can't really play around too much because all I have is the color cartridge. So this is on hold.

 

[Digerati]

Is print preview at 60%

 

[TrainableMan]

Yes, I don't normally set the preview checkmark but I just tried it and I see now that it does. But the only zoom options I see in the preview window are for the preview's display, not to scale it on the actual printed page.

And unfortunately the color ink has run out as well so I'm SOL here till I get ink.

I will be going to my brother's house and printing the labels I need for today.

Update: Used the reprint option and printed them at my brother's house. There they preview & print 100% normal size (and with ink ).

I also see that if I print preview this thread (back here at home) that it appears it would print perfectly normal size but I didn't actually hit print to see.

 

[Digerati]

So when you went to your brother's, I assume he has a different printer, thus different driver and it printed okay. I have never had the shrinking problem you have, but I have had problems with my HP 6500 not printing correctly that only an uninstall, reboot, and reinstall of the drivers worked. And note that was drivers from the website, not the installation disk that tries to install on our systems, all sorts of "fluff" - a euphemism for extra programs HP foists on us that attempt to run at startup and hog lot of resources - bloat). Epson, Brother, Canon, etc. they all do it.

These labels - you downloaded them and print them through your browser? What is the link - if you don't mind and I will try here - if free.

 

[TrainableMan]

They are USPS shipping labels and I print them from eBay. But again I'm convinced it all started from a voter website that had nothing to do with ebay or shipping. On that website it gave me an option to print all my candidates on a single page and it displayed a zoom window and 60% made everything from that page fit perfectly and now that's what I get every time I ship.

I have no idea what it set to make it scale like this and I can't seem to find any way to restore it to 100%. And the option to fit to a page is no longer available on that website because it was designed to be a paper you took with you to the polls but the next day it was just a results page.

 

[Digerati]

But again I'm convinced it all started from a voter website that had nothing to do with ebay or shipping. On that website it gave me an option to print all my candidates on a single page and it displayed a zoom window and 60% made everything from that page fit perfectly and now that's what I get every time I ship

It bothers me it stuck at 60% - from a security standpoint.

Since this prints from a webpage, and it printed fine at your brother's, I might log out and clear all my cookies with CCleaner, Windows Cleanup, or TFC.

One other thing - if the doc is a pdf, you might look in your pdf reader's option menus.

 

[TrainableMan]

No they aren't pdf's.

But that is a good idea, I will try clearing my cookies because it did come back even after a reboot, thanks you.

 

[TrainableMan]

I'm wondering if it may have been some java code or vbscript. I also saw something in my searches about scripting print.zoom or something where he was trying to set the page to print at 80 percent (the guy was looking for programming help because he was getting an error) but it wasn't helpful to me.

I'm hopeful the ink will arrive tomorrow.

 

[Digerati]

Well, I would not put anything past Java. If it was a scripting error, I think you would get a scripting error pop up.

 

[TrainableMan]

Well I never got an error, it did exactly what it was supposed to at the time, but I believe there should be code in there to return it to normal afterwards and that didn't happen.

No joy on the ink today, so Tuesday I guess

 

[Digerati]

but I believe there should be code in there to return it to normal afterwards

I agree. But the question is, what is "it" that needs to be returned to normal???

And again, Word docs and Notepad text files, and other files print fine, right?

 

[TrainableMan]

I'm pretty sure I found it. Besides shipping labels and some Excel inventory spreadsheets I don't print much of anything so now I just feel stupid...

I tried printing from word and it showed up in the "printer" preview fine so I figured that was OK. So then I decided to test print this forum thread but here on the forum I don't see a Print button in the actual webpage like I do in ebay labels and like I did on the voter website. And there is a printer icon in the corner of Firefox which is all I hit to test print a few days ago but for some reason today I actually pulled up the menu choices and there in the choices under File, just above the menu choice Print is another option Print Preview. This is different than the print preview I had tried (after you suggested it above) and which is part of the printer driver software. When I open "FireFox's" print preview I see the scaling option at the top and it was set at 70% (not 60, but anyway) so I set it to scale at 100% and then initiated a print and the "printer" preview was full-size. Next I went to ebay and tested a reprint and it shows up in "printer" preview as full-size too.

FireFox's Print Preview:


So when I get my ink on Tuesday I can try it to be absolutely certain but I'm pretty sure that's it.

The only thing that still puzzles me is that, when I was testing a few days ago, I tried from IE just to see if it was a "FireFox issue" and I swear those printed scaled-down too. But whatever, I think it's solved and I appreciate your ideas. Thank you.

 

[Digerati]

so now I just feel stupid...

today I actually pulled up the menu choices and there in the choices under File, just above the menu choice Print is another option Print Preview. This is different than the print preview I had tried (after you suggested it above) and which is part of the printer driver software.

Well, I have to admit, I got a good laugh out this as it is good to know I am not the only one who some times forgets to check the obvious first. lol

I am glad you got it sorted out.

 

[TrainableMan]

Final follow-up just to confirm everything is working. My ink arrived Tuesday and I've printed several labels since, all at 100%. Thank you for all your efforts.