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Inside margin too narrow when printed, even though equal in the Word document

Anonymous
2019-11-11T19:30:44+00:00

I have a document with left and right margins of 2 cm.  Exactly equal, and look equal on the screen.

However, when I print it on paper, the inside margin, the one that would be closest to the binding, is too small.  It is about 1.7 cm.  The outside margin is about 2.3. 

So the page is shifted about 0.3 cm to the inside margin.  This of course is on the opposite of what you would want if Word was somehow leaving extra margin for binding.

But I don't want any shifting going on for any reason.  I want both margins to be exactly the same, as set up in my Word document.

Any ideas what is going on here?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-11-11T21:32:46+00:00

    Charles, 2cm is just shy of an inch That is close to MS default and should be adequate for any printer to handle.

    If your page is being shifted approx .3 CM it sounds like you may have the gutter feature turned on. But it seems to be working in reverse. The gutter is supposed to be added to the "inside" margin to make the "gutter" wider to account for binding.

    Go to Page Layout tab > Page Setup group > Margins drop down button > Custom Margins command (at very bottom of drop down) to display the Page Setup dialog, with the Margins tab selected.

    At the top of the dialog make note of the left and right margin settings. Check to see if there is a value in the "Gutter" option, should be 0, and if the Gutter Position has been set.

    So, if no gutter is set in Word, check the printer.  Just under the printer selection dropdown there should be a hyperlink to "Printer Properties".  The specifics of the properties dialog is printer dependent. Just look through it and see if there is a gutter setting in there that has been turned on.

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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-11-12T00:11:14+00:00

    What size paper do you have set under the Page Setup dialog?  And, do you have that size paper in your printer?

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-11-11T20:19:32+00:00

    Hi

    This could be a gutter or something in your header or footer. It also could be something to do with your printer driver. That is a fairly narrow margin. What happens if you print to or save as pdf?

    If you want, save a sample document with the problem on OneDrive or Dropbox and paste a link here. Remove any confidential or sensitive information first. I or someone else can take a look at it.

    See https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

    This forum is a user-to-user support forum. I am a fellow user.

    I hope this information helps.

    Please let me know if you have any more questions or require further help.

    You can ask for more help by replying to this post (Reply button below).

    Regards

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-11-12T00:06:53+00:00

    I tried another program, and the same problem.  Perhaps it is with the printer.  I shall investigate.  Thanks.

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  5. Suzanne S Barnhill 277.8K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-11-11T22:25:10+00:00

    If you have problems with all documents, I'd suspect the printer. If you can't fix it (by updating the driver or changing any unfortunate setting), you may have to just adjust every Word document to accommodate it.

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