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Question

Brother printer cuts off right margin...

Jan 27, 2015 1:31PM PST

I have Brother Monochrome Laser printer HL2240.

Today for the first time no matter what margins I make, the right margin always prints to the right edge of the paper! After over 2 hours and 13 prints(!!!) I'm giving up. I even had the mfr. support, reinstall everything and the problem persists.

In the past I was able to reduce the margins on all 4 angles and it was fine. Occasionally a popup msg would say something like: It's out of the printing range, and I'd either print it it anyway, or would reduce a bit more on the problem angle. But never as persistent to be fixed as now.

Thanks ever so much for any help you can give me. Happy

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
Most often settings or driver
Jan 27, 2015 5:25PM PST

Without knowing if you've verified that the driver is correct (newest if possible) and that certain settings were correct, about all I can offer is to have you visit those areas. In the printer properties you want to make sure the paper size is correct for what's in the printer. When you go to print something, you should be able to visit those properties first. I've often found that some odd size of paper or a change in magnification of the typeset has been introduced. Have you verified these yet?

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Brother printer cuts off right margin.
Jan 27, 2015 7:23PM PST

Thank you so much Steven, I tried and tried and don't recall whether I saw in Properties where it offered to click for new drivers and other things and updates so I clicked...while keeping my fingers crossed, then I restarted, tried again and....no difference! I also checked the paper size which is "letter" but in desperation I also tried the "A4" to no avail. Under "Scale to Paper Size" it showed "No Scaling" so I changed to "Letter" and again no difference.

What would be the "change in magnification"?

I don't know what else to try...If you do please let me know? Thanx again!

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You'd want to make sure of the driver
Jan 27, 2015 7:37PM PST

Don't rely on the Windows driver but make sure it's from Brother and is their latest. You'd visit their web site for that. I wasn't clear about magnification but, with my HP, I can scale the type by percent if I want to limit the number of pages printed. I hate when I get a second page with one or two lines of type. I do this by using "Print Preview" from the "File" drop down menu. That should show what your printed page should look like. It's not always accurate but it's something you might want to check. If it shows you a proper page without margin issues but still prints incorrectly, you need to look elsewhere. Sometimes it's the program being used but you start with the basics such as having the correct driver.

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Brother printer cuts off right margin
Jan 27, 2015 8:02PM PST

Thanks again! I will try what you advise, and if no solution I'll go to Brother Support (which I didn't before because they throw at you a long list of pre-fabricated answers irrelevant to my problem) lol! Thanks again Steve!

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Additionally
Jan 27, 2015 7:47PM PST

I don't know if this will help but I found this page at Brother. It's for the 64 bit version of Windows 7 but I don't know whether yours is 32 or 64.

http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hl2240_us_eu&os=93

You'll also see a firmware update and sometimes these correct issues that have been reported, verified and corrected. If your printer was purchased prior to the firmware release date shown which is June of 2013, I'd consider doing that update. You'll also see a 2012 driver update. Again, if your printer is older than that and you used some driver disk that came with it, I'd get that driver. Make sure you get the one for your Windows 7 version be it 32 or 64 bit. Good luck.

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Brother printer cuts off right margin.
Jan 28, 2015 12:06AM PST

How kind of you to go out of your way to help me, Kevin! I had gone to this site twice. The 2n time I gathered enough courage to follow all the prompts there and nothing happened. I then emailed them and won't get a response until after 24/48 hours. I called them and stayed with one techi for half hour then he said he doesn't know. I asked to speak with a supervisor. He too said to change the margins or take the problem to Microsoft. Sad Such experts huh?

One more think I wanted to do on Brother's site was where they show drawings of printed pages with their different defects and saying what to do. I went through them to see a page with the right margin all chewed up like mine.....but this is the ONLY print defect that wasn't there!

I'll try Microsoft and God help me. The printer is fairly new so don't understand why this is happening.

Meantime, I thank you so much for being so kind and helpful! :o)

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You're going to get into the finger pointing game
Jan 28, 2015 2:58AM PST

and that's no fun. Perhaps it's better to look for workarounds. As I mentioned previously, the program you are printing from can make a difference. I've had good luck with Adobe pdfs and MS Word documents but it gets lousy if you're trying to print web page content, email and stuff using screen fonts. It seems even one's monitor enters the possible variables in that game. If your problem is printing web page content, you can try highlighting the desired text (that can also be a trick) and doing a copy/paste into Wordpad or similar document program. At least do a print preview first and compare that to what actually prints. I can tell you that web page content in print preview can be very odd and some parts go missing in either the view or the actual print. Hopefully you'll find a customer support person who is patient and knowledgeable but I wouldn't count on it. You can keep posting here and the more information you can provide about what you are trying to print, what application you are using, whether your monitor is standard or wide screen, etc., the better chance there will be that someone will come up the the right magic.

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Bingo. You've covered the old Web printing problem.
Jan 28, 2015 3:17AM PST

Have you run into newer users that exclaim "No, I think they fixed that long ago."
Bob

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I've learned to avoid using the print icon
Jan 28, 2015 4:25AM PST

for sites that offer recipes and such. One doesn't always get what one sees but it's definitely a good way to keep paper mills in business.

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Keeping paper mills in business
Jan 28, 2015 5:09AM PST

I've always noticed how amazing it is that most everything you print wants to place that last single un-needed, useless line an an additional page when printing, even if it takes enlarging the font to make it stretch out. I seldom print things, but when I do, I check the print preview before clicking. And if it's a web object, I'll copy it to a Word doc and edit it to fit!

Too bad about paper mills though, many are already gone (my career involved paper products).

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Brother printer cuts off right margin
Jan 28, 2015 4:45AM PST

No, it isn't any fun at all! :o) But I rarely print from the web, and when I do, the same as you, I copy/paste strictly what I need, mainly because I don't want to populate the Word space with unnecessary "bulk".

What I'm now trying to print is a one-page letter on Word 2003 which I typed myself. No graphics, just plain text. As to the "program I'm printing from", I'm not sure what you mean. I don't think it's Adobe since it's not a PDF or any other fancy thing. Then there is my server for the emails and the internet which is a not well known RCN.com. Are there more programs?

While I printed many pages yesterday thinking that the next one, after I changed the margins or did some other troubleshooting, would be correct, I now just use the print preview and only from time to time I print it in case the preview lied to me lol!

We are having a nasty snow storm now in NYC so I couldn't get out to an internet cafe to try this in another computer and/or another printer, but I think I'll be able to do it tomorrow.

Thank you very much for everything!

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Clarification Request
Is this printing, from a web page?
Jan 28, 2015 12:17AM PST
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Brother printer cuts off right margin
Jan 28, 2015 4:50AM PST

Hi Bob, as I explained to Kevin I'm not trying to print from the Web. Happy

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Even Word can screw up. I know.
Jan 28, 2015 4:57AM PST

I find it best to set the printer as the default printer for the document on hand so Word will reformat it to fit the printer. There are other reasons for it not to fit but most of those are video and printer drivers along with folk tinkering with the unprintable area in the printer setup. Here's a screen shot but BEWARE that I can't guess what your controls look like. With millions of PCs today, and no single one looking the same....

https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/word-how-to-find-out-your-printers-printable-area/
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/imageServlet?DOCID=emr_na-c00497117-1/c00497121.jpg

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Brother printer cuts off right margin
Jan 28, 2015 11:36AM PST

Thank you for the links Bob. I tried them but...it seems my Word isn't working properly altogether. Among other things I observed, when I change the margins the little sample showing how margins change, doesn't change them at all, plus other things. No question my Word is sick! I may have to ask Microsoft since it looks like it's their baby. If they can't help, I may have to call a techy to come and do it.....and hope he/she knows what makes this Word tick....

I rebooted several times, changed things around, tried so many things I'm getting sick of it myself and feel I've taken enough time from you and Kevin. I thank you both so much! Bye bye...

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Let me repeat.
Jan 29, 2015 12:18AM PST

This is not only the printer driver but the video driver. Both are called into play to get a WYSIWYG but can fail. Microsoft is not the only player in the soup here.

For over a decade I just deal with it by pulling in the right margin if I don't have time to get into video and printer drivers.
Bob