Fitting a Document to a Single Page

A common problem that occurs in some offices is the phenomenon of documents printing differently on different systems. For instance, the same document may print as a single page on one system, but use two pages on a different system.

This can certainly be frustrating. Differences in appearance and printing of a document from one system to another can be due to a wide variety of factors. Assuming that each system is using Word 2007, differences in installed fonts, printer drivers, and even video cards can cause differences in how a document appears and prints. The only sure-fire way around this problem is to convert the document to a PDF format using a program such as Adobe Acrobat. There are a couple of things you can try, however, with the document itself.

First, you can make sure that when the document is saved, you embed fonts within it. You do this by clicking the Office button, Word Options, and Save. (Click here to see a related figure.) Near the bottom of the dialog box you'll see an option entitled Embed Fonts in the File. This option, when selected, should overcome any system differences that are due solely to issues of which fonts are installed on the systems.

You can also make sure that the User Printer Metrics to Lay Out Document option is selected in Word. You do this by clicking Word Options, clicking Advanced, scrolling to the bottom of the options, and clicking Layout Options. Search through the options until you find the one you need and make sure it is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.) This option can help ease some differences (but not all differences) between printers that are introduced by different versions of Word.

It could also be that if the problem document is using the Normal.dotm template file, that the styles in the Normal.dotm template files on each of the systems are defined differently. If this is the case, then the solution is to copy the Normal.dotm template file from one system to the other. Be careful in doing this, however, as it can affect other customizations on the target system, and may cause unintended consequences in other documents.

As far as forcing a document to a single page, Print Preview offers a "Shrink One Page" tool (in the Preview group of the Ribbon). This reduces the number of pages in the document by one so that you can prevent a small portion of the document from spilling onto another page. There are risks in using this tool, however—it can mess up some of your formatting. You will want to experiment to see if it works for your particular needs.