Margins are wrong, printout is off-center, can't print to edge, printing is cut off

Problem:

• Printouts have white margins even though your slides don't
• Slide images are off-center on your printouts
• Can't control the margins on your printouts

Reason
Nearly all printers have an area at the edges that they can't print to. It's a physical limitation of the printer. There's nothing you or your software can do to change it.

Workaround
If your printer allows it, print to the next larger paper size, then trim the margins off later.

Problem

To make things worse, most inkjet printers have uneven unprintable margins. The margin at the trailing end of the paper (the end that's printed last) is generally wider than the margins on the other three sides.

When PowerPoint prints slides, it sends the slide image to the printer at whatever size the printer & printer driver specify as the largest printable size, but it has no control over where on the page the printer places the slide image. Some printer drivers include a "fake" page size that allows even margins but a smaller image that they may automatically center on the printed page. If your printer has this feature, it should allow you to get centered printouts.

Otherwise there's not much you or PowerPoint can do about this. Inkjet printers print stuff off-center and that's that.

Workaround
If you're willing to accept a slightly smaller slide image, you can print Notes Pages instead of Slides. Modify the Notes Master in your presentation:

• Choose File, Slide Setup and set Notes pages to print in the same orientation as your slide pages
• Choose View, Master, Notes Master
• Select and delete the notes text and any other text placeholders you don't want to appear on your slide printouts.
• Select and scale the slide image on the notes master to a larger size. NOT full page, but somewhat smaller. You'll need to find out what the trailing margin on your printer is and make the margins on both sides of your notes master at least that large.
• Print a trial notes page from one of your slides. It will probably be off center. Go back to the notes master and move the slide image accordingly. It'll probably take several trial printouts to get right, but once you've got it nailed down, you should be able to get printouts of just your slides, properly centered on your inkjet printouts.
• Once you've got it nailed, right click the slide image, choose Format and record the size and position of the slide image so you can use the same info in your other presentations.

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