Printing A3 document on 2 pieces of A4 in Publisher 2007 ?

Hi All, I have a document originally created in Pub2003 that is A3 in size.
Which I printed on 2 sheets of A4, then just taped the sheets together.
However since moving to Pub 2007 I cannot for the life of me figure out how
to print in the same way. Im choosing A3 as the page size, then selecting A4
as the print paper size. Yet in the Print Preview it shows it will print onto
FOUR pieces of A4 with the document smack in the middle. Changing the
orientation of the Print paper would appear to be the correct thing to do,
but it then shows it spread across THREE pieces of A4. This is driving me
nuts, it should be so simple. The document, yes it's too big for A4 but it
fits easily onto A3 and 2 sheets of A4 is exactly the same size. Even
allowing for print margins it should fit comfortably. Any advice greatly
appreciated. Thanks.

I'm not certain what you are doing. If you setup your printer for A3 and can
print on A3 stock, you shouldn't have to tape pages together. If your printer
can print on stock this big, then I suggest setting up your page as a poster or
if you want to print on A4 stock create your document on two pages. (insert
three pages and view a two-page spread).

--
Mary Sauer MSFT MVP
http://office.microsoft.com/
http://msauer.mvps.org/
news://msnews.microsoft.com

"GC" wrote in message
news
Hi All, I have a document originally created in Pub2003 that is A3 in size.
Which I printed on 2 sheets of A4, then just taped the sheets together.
However since moving to Pub 2007 I cannot for the life of me figure out how
to print in the same way. Im choosing A3 as the page size, then selecting A4
as the print paper size. Yet in the Print Preview it shows it will print onto
FOUR pieces of A4 with the document smack in the middle. Changing the
orientation of the Print paper would appear to be the correct thing to do,
but it then shows it spread across THREE pieces of A4. This is driving me
nuts, it should be so simple. The document, yes it's too big for A4 but it
fits easily onto A3 and 2 sheets of A4 is exactly the same size. Even
allowing for print margins it should fit comfortably. Any advice greatly
appreciated. Thanks.

GC wrote:
Changing the
orientation of the Print paper would appear to be the correct thing to do,
but it then shows it spread across THREE pieces of A4. This is driving me
nuts, it should be so simple. The document, yes it's too big for A4 but it
fits easily onto A3 and 2 sheets of A4 is exactly the same size. Even
allowing for print margins it should fit comfortably.

Once you've changed the page orientation, reducing the spread to three
pages, you need to change the overlap to zero. This will spread the
document over two pages, with the caveat that anything that falls in the
printer's non-printing areas between the two pages (i.e. the left edge
of one and the right edge of the other) will not be visible and will be
white space (this is one of two reasons for using an overlap and
printing on three pages; the other is that if you trim off the
non-printing white margin, you are never 100% accurate, so parts of the
document will be cut off accidentally - having a small redundant area
means that this doesn't matter as much).

--
Ed Bennett - MVP Microsoft Publisher
http://ed.mvps.org

Firstly thanks to both Ed and Mary for taking the trouble to reply.

To clarify Mary's point, I only have a printer that can print A4 maximum,
hence the need to tape 2 pieces together to get A3. With Pub2003 I simply
chose an A3 Landscape page, pressed print, it knew I only had an A4 printer
and split it equally onto 2 pieces of A4 to give me the desired result.

Onto Ed's comments which I believe are on the right lines. However, if I
choose to create a new document, specify A3 Landscape, then choose Print
Preview for this completely blank document it shows it spread across 4 pages.
!!!??? Switching the Print Options to Portrait it then shows it on 3 pages.
Incidentally the Print options always reset to landscape meaning I would have
to set it every time. But I wouldn't even mind that if it did the trick.

I have to say that I am a novice Publisher user, only using it as a means to
an end, but I am an accomplished computer user, indeed a qualified MCSE. But
yet this Publisher program seems so counter-intuitive I despair with it.

As ever further advice warmly welcomed.

"Ed Bennett" wrote:

GC wrote:
Changing the
orientation of the Print paper would appear to be the correct thing to do,
but it then shows it spread across THREE pieces of A4. This is driving me
nuts, it should be so simple. The document, yes it's too big for A4 but it
fits easily onto A3 and 2 sheets of A4 is exactly the same size. Even
allowing for print margins it should fit comfortably.

Once you've changed the page orientation, reducing the spread to three
pages, you need to change the overlap to zero. This will spread the
document over two pages, with the caveat that anything that falls in the
printer's non-printing areas between the two pages (i.e. the left edge
of one and the right edge of the other) will not be visible and will be
white space (this is one of two reasons for using an overlap and
printing on three pages; the other is that if you trim off the
non-printing white margin, you are never 100% accurate, so parts of the
document will be cut off accidentally - having a small redundant area
means that this doesn't matter as much).

--
Ed Bennett - MVP Microsoft Publisher
http://ed.mvps.org

GC wrote:
Onto Ed's comments which I believe are on the right lines. However, if I
choose to create a new document, specify A3 Landscape, then choose Print
Preview for this completely blank document it shows it spread across 4 pages.
!!!???

This also occurs here. I presume this is the default as it means that
there is no non-printing region, whereas printing it on 2 or 3 sheets
leaves a non-printing region down one or both long edge(s).

Switching the Print Options to Portrait it then shows it on 3 pages.
Incidentally the Print options always reset to landscape meaning I would have
to set it every time. But I wouldn't even mind that if it did the trick.

File Print Setup Orientation Portrait OK makes the options stick
for me. It also (on my machine) defaults to printing on two pages with
no overlap. Check the "Horizontal overlap" and "Vertical overlap"
options when you adjust your Print Setup to make sure that that's the
case on your machine (set them to zero). Print Preview then shows two
pages here.

I have to say that I am a novice Publisher user, only using it as a means to
an end, but I am an accomplished computer user, indeed a qualified MCSE. But
yet this Publisher program seems so counter-intuitive I despair with it.

Many describe Publisher 2007's printing experience as a backward step
and counter-intuitive. In addition, being a computer expert doesn't
necessarily make you an instant whiz with publishing software - the
computer knowledge is only half the battle!

--
Ed Bennett - MVP Microsoft Publisher
http://ed.mvps.org

Hello Ed,

Glad to hear that for the first portion at least I am experiencing default
behaviour. Yet the next part, when switching to Portrait still results in
seeing 3 pages, even with both the Overlap settings set to zero. Now here's
some more odd behaviour, I only have one physical printer, yet if I switch
the printer output to MS XPS Document the Print Preview then shows
"correctly" as 2 pages. Also the MS Office Document Image Writer shows as 2
pages. However choosing "Send to One Note 2007" it reverts back to 3 pages. I
also noticed the "Print single tile" options and can see that with a
combination of that and XPS I can come up with a botched workaround by saving
the document in 2 halves. Not ideal but will hopefully allow me to complete
the task at hand. What really niggles me is the fact that in Pub2003 this
task was so simple.

Thanks once again for your input.