Why your planner prints at the wrong size

There are essentially two causes, and between them they account for nearly everything.

Cause one: scaling is on

Every print dialog has a scaling option, and the default is frequently something like Fit to page or Shrink oversized pages. Both resize the artwork to fit what the driver believes the printable area to be, which is always smaller than the paper.

The symptom is a page that looks right but is a few percent small, with margins that no longer match the design. If you are punching pages for a binder, the holes then land at the wrong depth.

The fix is to choose Actual size or 100%:

• Adobe Acrobat and Reader: Page Sizing and Handling, Actual size
• macOS Preview: uncheck Scale to fit, or set Scale: 100%
• Chrome and Edge: More settings, Scale: Default or Custom: 100
• Firefox: Scale: 100%

Check behind any Advanced or Properties button too. Some drivers keep their own scale setting that the main dialog does not display.

A PDF can request this: setting PrintScaling to None in the document catalogue makes most dialogs preselect Actual size. It is one line inside the file. Every file on this site sets it, and almost nothing else in this category does.

Cause two: the file is the wrong size to begin with

If a file claims to be A5 and its page box is 612 x 792 points, it is a US Letter file. Printing it on A5 paper means scaling by about 65%, which takes a 7.5 mm writing line down to 4.9 mm.

This is extremely common. Sixteen free weekly planner PDFs inspected while building this site were all Letter, including several whose pages mention A4 or A5 in the print instructions.

Check the page size in your PDF reader’s document properties before printing. Real sizes are:

• US Letter: 612 x 792 pt
• A4: 595.28 x 841.89 pt
• A5: 419.53 x 595.28 pt
• Half Letter: 396 x 612 pt

Every planner on this site prints its own page box in the footer, so you can check what you have without opening a dialog.

The margins are not what you think

The unprintable edge on a home printer is larger and less symmetrical than most people assume, and it varies enormously by model and even by operating system.

From the manufacturers’ own published specifications:

Printer	Unprintable edge
Brother mono laser, HL-L23xx series	4.23 mm all round
HP Officejet 4500	3.0 mm all sides
HP Officejet Pro 8100	3.3 mm on Windows, but 12 mm at the bottom on macOS and Linux
Canon PIXMA G4210	3.0 mm top and left, 5.0 mm bottom and right
Canon, auto duplex enabled	a further 2 mm off the top
Epson, single sheet	3.0 mm, but 15 mm at the bottom on cut-sheet media on many models

That HP figure is worth reading twice: the same printer reserves 3.3 mm on one operating system and 12 mm on another.

A margin that works on one of those is not a margin that works on all of them, which is why every file here uses 12.7 mm, half an inch, on all four sides. It is the smallest single value that clears everything above.

Two-per-sheet printing

The Pages per sheet or Multiple option in a print dialog scales pages down to fit slots. Putting a Letter page into a half-Letter slot means a 64.71% scale, and because the aspect ratios do not match you also get a white band about 35 mm wide down the sheet.

An imposed 2-up file does something different: it draws two full-size pages onto one sheet, with no scaling anywhere. If you want two planner pages per sheet, use a file built that way rather than the driver option.

Double-sided printing

Portrait sheets flip on the long edge. Landscape sheets, including 2-up sheets, flip on the short edge. Getting it wrong makes every second side upside down.

Our files request the correct flip edge. If your printer has no automatic duplex, print odd pages, return the stack, print even pages, and test with two sheets first.

Diagnosing it

Measure the printed page with a ruler.

• Right dimensions: it worked.
• A few millimetres small in both directions: scaling is still on somewhere.
• Right width, wrong height, or the reverse: the file was not the size you thought.
• Content clipped at one edge: the file’s margins are smaller than your printer’s unprintable area. That is the file’s fault, not yours.

What we do about it

Every file is laid out for its own page box, with 12.7 mm margins, and requests Actual size and the correct duplex edge in the print dialog. The dimension stamp at the bottom of every sheet states the exact page size, so a file that prints wrong can be diagnosed by comparing what is printed to what you measure.