When does this happen?
You open a PDF you downloaded from a website or received as an attachment. Maybe it's a form, a flyer, or a manual. You hit Print. The preview looks fine. But when the paper comes out, the left and right edges (or top and bottom) are missing. Words are chopped. Images are sliced. It's infuriating.
I see this most often with HP DeskJet 2700 series, Canon PIXMA TS8300, and older Brother laser printers. The trigger: you're printing a PDF that was designed for a slightly bigger page—like A4 when you're loading Letter, or Tabloid when you're loading A4. The printer driver tries to fit the whole image but the paper isn't big enough.
Why does it happen?
The root cause is almost always a page size mismatch. The PDF's internal page dimensions are bigger than the paper in your tray. Your printer has a non-printable margin zone (usually 0.25 inches on each side). When the content extends into that zone, the driver either shrinks everything or it just clips the edges.
But here's the kicker: many PDFs don't have proper trim boxes. They say the page is 8.5x11 but the content bleeds right to the edge. Printers can't print edge-to-edge on every paper type. So the edge gets cut.
Another less common cause: your printer driver is set to a custom paper size that doesn't match what's actually loaded. Or you've got “Borderless Printing” turned on for a paper type that doesn't support it. Canon printers, especially, will sometimes force a reduction that clips content when borderless is enabled for plain paper.
The fix – step by step
I've trained over 40 help desk techs on this. The fix is three clicks in Adobe Reader. But you've got to do them in the right order. Don't skip step 2.
- Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Not your browser's built-in PDF viewer—the actual Adobe Reader app. If you don't have it, grab it free from get.adobe.com/reader. The browser viewer often hides the print settings we need.
- Check the actual page size. Hit Ctrl+D (or go to File > Properties). Look at the “Page Size” field under the Description tab. Write down what it says. If it's 8.5 x 11 inches (Letter), great. If it's 8.27 x 11.69 inches (A4), your paper tray probably has Letter loaded. That's your mismatch. If it's 11 x 17 inches (Tabloid) and you're on Letter, same deal.
- Open the Print dialog – Ctrl+P.
- Find the Page Sizing & Handling section. On older Acrobat, it's a radio button group. On newer versions (2020+), it's a larger pane with icons. You want the option labeled “Fit” or “Shrink oversized pages”. Do not choose “Actual size” – that will print at the PDF's native dimensions and clip the edges.
- Select “Fit” – the icon shows a page shrinking to fit inside another page. If your version says “Shrink oversized pages,” pick that. The preview window on the left will update to show the content scaled down so all edges are visible.
- Check “Choose paper source by PDF page size.” This tells the driver to automatically pick the correct tray if you have multiple paper sizes loaded. If you only have one tray, leave it unchecked.
- Click Print. After the job finishes, the edges should now be fully visible. If they aren't, undo and try the next step.
Alternative fix in the printer driver
If the PDF viewer method doesn't work (rare, but it happens with some Canon drivers), you can force the scale in the printer's properties:
- In the Print dialog, click Properties (or Preferences) next to your printer name.
- Look for a Page Layout or Scaling tab.
- Set scaling to Fit to Page or enter a percentage manually. Start with 94% if you're going from A4 to Letter. That's the exact ratio difference.
- Also disable Borderless Printing if it's on. That feature often forces a small crop.
What if it still fails?
Three things to check:
- Paper size in the tray. Pull out the tray. Look at the side guides. They should match the paper you loaded. If they're set to A4 but you loaded Letter, the printer thinks it has A4. Fix the guides and reload.
- Driver update. Go to your printer manufacturer's support site. Download the latest full driver package (not the basic one from Windows Update). HP's Universal Print Driver is notorious for misreporting printable areas. Use the model-specific driver instead.
- PDF is a scanned image. If the PDF is actually a scanned photo (like a contract that was scanned at 200% zoom), the fix above might not work. In that case, open the PDF, hit Ctrl+Shift+4 to take a screenshot, paste into Word or Paint, resize to fit the page, then print from there. It's a hack, but it works.
If none of that helps, the document itself may have an incorrectly set page box. You'd need to use Acrobat Pro's “Crop Pages” tool to reset the trim box. That's an advanced fix—most people just resave the PDF as a reduced-size PDF using the “Reduce File Size” tool, which sometimes recalculates the page dimensions correctly.