TIP: HP printer defaults to letter size

contink · December 9, 2008

Thought I'd share this one as I'd forgotten about it until after I looked a numpty for half an hour.

Hp printers have a lovely habit of ignoring your paper sizes set in the:

[Printer] Properties > Device Settings

.. and going with "letter" instead.

It's frustrating because as soon as you enter the defaults in your printer preferences and change to a different "printing shortcut" the driver realises the mistake and automatically changes to A4.

The way to get this message out to all your client workstations/user is as follows:

On the server/machine acting as the "Share" for the printer(s):

[Printer] Properties > Advanced > Printing Defaults

Select any of the other "printing shortcuts" and watch the paper size change to A4, now select the printing shorcut you want to use and click "Apply" then "OK".. You can probably get away with just clicking OK without hitting apply but I like to be sure

Repeat for each of your printers and then re-deploy the printers as you would normally... In my case a login script deletes all network printers and then re-adds them.

Oh and throwaway tip for anyone with an A3 printer (like the K8600) who sets up a printing shortcut to print A4 source documents as A3 size.

You can't use the "Hold mismatched documents" option with this because the daft at HP have not thought through the logic on A4 source to A3 paper (when the A3 paper is loaded) as being valid. For whatever reason it won't print until you tell the printer you've loaded A4 paper.. Daft I know but this is HP..