Using "borderless letter" doesn't work in Pages

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Using "borderless letter" doesn't work in Pages

I’m using Pages version 14.0 (7039.0.94) running on macOS 13.6.6 (22G630). I love Pages…it's so much more intuitive than MS Word, but I seem to have run into a bug that's frustrating me: I have a 5 page Word Processing document that has an 8½ × 11 image set to be a "Section Layout Object" (Arrange menu > Section Layouts > Move Object to Section Layout). I would like the image to print double-sided and all the way to the borders of the page. In File menu > Page Setup…, for Paper Size I choose US Letter, Borderless (this doesn't appear to stick: If I re-open the Page Setup dialog, the Page Size has gone back to plain US Letter not borderless).

I've tried exporting to PDF and then using Preview to print double-sided and borderless. Here the borderless works (but the print quality suffers significantly); borderless and double-sided doesn't work—double-sided refuses to work if I've chosen borderless printing. Interestingly, Preview doesn't have a Page Setup dialog, you set the page size within the Print dialog. I've considered printing pages 1, 3, 5 and then manually feeding those back through the printer to print pages 2 & 4, but the poor print quality (even on Best) is unacceptable.

I’m using a Canon TR7020a printer that's about a year old. (Not particularly thrilled with the printer, BTW.)

Sure enough, when I print the document, it doesn't print to the borders; there's an approximately ¼ unprinted border around the printed page. Is this a known bug? Are there any workarounds?

Thanks in advance for any help provided. I do appreciate the depth of knowledge that's available in this forum. (I worked at Apple for 13 years, first as an instructional designer [writing documentation at Claris, FileMaker, and finally on AppleWorks at the "mother ship" on Infinite Loop] and then as an interaction designer [the cognitive psychology side of interface design] back at FileMaker; my Apple knowledge is broad, but not deep in any one particular area.

iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 12.2

Posted on Apr 27, 2024 8:35 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 28, 2024 1:46 AM in response to UI Guy

You can set the U.S. Letter margins, header, and footer to 0 in the Document panel, not in the Page Setup panel. Once you have done that, then in the View menu, select Show Layout. This will place a non-printing outline boundary around the document to confirm that the image that you positioned as a Section Layout Object covers that visual document outline. Think of this as a manual full bleed by extending the image over the layout borders. If it still prints with a gap, then it is likely your printer.

The first paragraph is all you can do in Pages and the rest depends on whether your Canon printer can perform full bleed printing or that quarter-inch gap will prevail. You may need to review the printer's Print panel options or physical printer driver settings, or even confer with Canon. If you are using a low-resolution image as a Section Layout Object, Pages is not going to make it sharper on export to PDF.

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