Printing Web Pages

Hints for printing from web pages

Print size is affected by viewing size   You can choose to print just one page   You can print a selection   Make sure that you print only the page and not its background   Always look at the Print Preview   Page is too wide, text cut off on the right of the page   Make Your Own Copy   If you want a picture that for any reason isn't being printed ...

Print size is affected by viewing size.

This is an annoying feature of Internet Explorer. If you find the text on a web page too small to read comfortably and therefore click View > Text Size and choose Larger or Largest, any printing you do may be correspondingly enlarged. Not only that, but if you print out an email from Outlook Express, that will also use a large font. That's just one more reason for always checking Print Preview.

Printing from Outlook Express is affected by viewing size in Internet Explorer

Most of the text on most web pages can be changed to a larger or smaller size, but this setting can also affect the printing of emails. If you have a large viewing size set in Internet Explorer, emails printed from Outlook Express may be in a huge font.

Slow Preview

With some long pages, or pages that have a lot of graphics, the print preview window may remain blank for minutes while the browser gets its act together. I hope you'll be willing to wait, because this definitely applies to my Paint tutorials.   top

You can choose to print just one page.

You don't have to print seven or eight pages just to get one recipe or one photograph. Go to the print preview, click through the pages until you see the part you want to print and make a mental note of the page number. Then, after you've clicked “Print,” type that number into the “Pages” place. There'll be two boxes, one marked “from” and the other “to”. If you want to print just page seven, for instance, you type a 7 into each of those two boxes.

You can print a selection

The part that you would like to print may not show as a complete page in Print Preview.

In that case, click just before the part you want and hold the Shift key while you scroll and click at the bottom of your chosen piece. This should highlight the part between the two clicks. You can release the Shift key, but don't click anywhere on the page or the selection will be cancelled.

Go to the File menu and click Print.

In the print dialogue, check Selection.

Click the Print or OK button.

(Sometimes your selection will include things you don't want—menus, ads, navigation and so on. If it's only a little bit, live with it, but if it's a lot, make your own copy)   top

Make sure that you print only the page and not its background.

To ensure that this happens:

1. Click on Tools on the browser menu bar.
2. Click on Internet Options.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Scroll down until you see a printer icon.
5. Make sure that “Print background colours and images” is not checked.
6. Click OK.

This won't affect the printing of pictures or diagrams that are part of the actual page.

If you do want to leave those out as well, click Print, but when the print dialogue appears, don't click OK. Instead, look for a button marked Properties. It's often near the top right-hand corner of the box. If it isn't there, there may be a box marked Setup, and clicking this will take you to a box where you can find Properties. Once you've found the properties box, look through the various tabs until you see a short list of choices that includes Draft. Mark that choice, then click OK as many times as necessary to get back to the usual Print dialogue.

Depending on your printer, you may or may not need to revisit the printer properties and change the setting back to normal before you print a document with pictures. This will depend on your particular printer driver—some keep the latest settings, some go back to default at the end of each session.

Bear in mind, also, that while some pictures are purely decorative, some are an essential part of a page which won't make lots of sense without them.   top

Always look at the Print Preview.

This not only lets you know if there are more pages than you'd anticipated, but it also lets you check that the page is going to fit properly.

• Clicking the small arrows will move you forwards or backwards through the preview a page at a time.
• Clicking the double arrows will take you to the end or the beginning of the document.
• To go to a particular page, type its number into the page number box and hit enter.
• Clicking the drop down arrow beside the box that here says 75% lets you choose a different view. If you choose 50% you’ll see the whole page (actually you'll see two pages) from top to bottom.
• Clicking one of the two magnifying glass symbols will give you a bigger or smaller view.
• Clicking the word Print at the left end of the bar will open the print dialogue box.

You get to Page Setup, where margins and orientation can be changed, by clicking this button, which is just to the right of Print on the Print Preview menu bar.

If the page is obviously not going to fit, try adjusting the margins.   top

Page is too wide, text cut off on the right of the page

Occasionally a page is so wide that you'll need to change the page orientation from Portrait to Landscape.

If it still doesn't fit, try making your own copy.

When you are looking at a web page, to get to Print Preview you click on the File menu and then on Print Preview.

Some web pages have a button you can click to take you to a printer friendly version. This is usually a version without extras, like menus or unnecessary pictures.

Make Your Own Copy

If you see useful information spread over too many pages, you can always copy and edit it before you print. Definitely the best way to collect recipes! Paste them all into one document, one after the other, or in categories.

• Click just before the part you want begins, hold Shift while you scroll down and click after the end of the part you want.
• Hold down the Ctrl key and tap “c”.
• Open Notepad or some other text editor, or your word processor.
• Hold down the Ctrl key and tap “v”.
• Save with a name of your choice, then edit and print.

Note, though, that pictures will not be included, and any links will usually be lost.   top

If you want a picture that for any reason isn't being printed ...

... just copy that picture in the usual way.

That is, right click on the picture, choose Save Image and OK the Save dialogue.

After that, you can open and print the picture, or insert it into a document.

(Please don't do this if there's a note on the page asking you not to.)

 

 

 

Questions or comments? I’d love to hear from you. My email address is here.

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