Preview prints lose the bottom part of the page

There are two Presets: "Standard" and "Last Used". I don't really have a clue about them, but I tried both. They seem to behave identically.

So where can I learn about these mysterious "Presets"? I tried clicking on Preview's Help button, typed "Presets" (without the quotes) into its input widget, and it said "No Results Found". I also typed "Preview Presets" to Spotlight, which found some matches, but none of them seem to have anything to with Preview or printing.

I see that the "Presets" menu has a "Save As..." item that's not greyed out, but I don't see anything saying what this would be saving. If it saves the current settings of Preview, well, they're obviously wrong somehow, so saving them doesn't seem like it would help anything.

I just stumbled across something that I suspect is relevant. I was exploring the rest of the menus in Preview's Print windows (the one that CMD-P produces). The lower-right corner has a menu that says "Preview", and selects from various groups of settings. I looked at the "Paper/Type/Quality" item, and it has a "Paper Type:" submenu. This gives a selection of things like "Plain paper", "Inkjet paper", Photo paper", etc. What I noticed is that the items in the "Plain paper" and "Inkjet paper" menus are all greyed out. It only allows me to choose among the "Photo paper" choices, which has "HP Premium Plus Photo Paper" checked. So it thinks I'm trying to print a photo, and it won't permit me to tell it that I'm printing on plain paper.

I'm guessing that this is where that mandatory border might have come from. It also might explain why printing is so much slower than it was a few days ago. But I can't find any way to make it accept the fact that the tray contains plain paper. Those choices are all greyed out.

Is there a way to make it accept the correct paper type here? And what might I have done to make it insist that nothing except photo paper is allowed?

I obviously don't understand this. After poking around in Preview's Edit menu (because there wasn't a Text or a Text Edit menu ;-), and finding no Page Setup, it finally occurred to me that Text Edit might mean the app by that name. So I found it and started it up, and sure enough, its File menu had a Page Setup item, which I selected. I got a window that looks like the right half of your example. The name list had only Untitled, and it wouldn't let me change that. It did have other fields, and the bottom margin was "0.47 in", consistent with the 12 mm border I'm suddenly getting. The others were all "0.13 in". I changed all four to "0.10 in", and tried to save the info. I couldn't find anything to do this. I guessed that maybe OK would do that, so I pressed it, and the window went away.

I then went back to Preview, to see if anything had changed. I looked at its Presets menu, and it still contained only "Standard" and "Last Used Settings", with no sign of either "Untitled" or "Default". So I chose the latter, and tried printing a page. Same problem, the printed page was missing the text that Preview clearly showed at the bottom.

I went back to Text Edit, to see if it knew anything different. This time, clicking on the "Untitled" produced an input widget, which I replaced with "Default", and again looked for an obvious way to save this. No luck, so I tried "OK" again, went back to Preview, and found that nothing at all had changed there. Its Settings menu still contained only "Standard" and "Last Used Settings", with no "Default" anywhere. I tried printing the page it showed correctly, and again, the bottom line was missing on the paper page.

But this is all a bit baffling. Why would I use Text Edit to correct a setting in Preview? Or, if the print window, which looks the same in all aps, is really a shared tool from a library, why didn't Text Edit's changes affect Preview? And why doesn't Preview show the Manage Custom Sizes that I found in Text Edit?

I'm wondering if I should try the old Customer-Support gimmick of trying a full reboot. That would kill all the stuff I have alive right now, and I'd have to somehow find my way back here afterwards (which is quite time consuming with this forum's complex UI ;-), so I'd rather avoid that if I can.

Maybe I didn't use the little "+" Icon. I'll do it again ... OK; I made a new "Test1" page size. It came up with "0.25 in" for he left, top and right margin, and "0.56 in" for the bottom. I changed all four to "0.10 in", which should be 2.54 mm. At the top, it says the width is "8.5 in" and the height is "11 in", which is correct. Then I hit "OK", which closed the little window. I also hit "OK" in Text Edit's little Settings window, and it closed.

Then I went over to Preview, which still had one of my pages with some text in all four corners (page numbers at both top corners, the date at both bottom corners). This page printed fine 3 or 4 days ago. I tried the Paper Size menu, and it contains a Test1 entry, so I selected it. I checked that the page preview at the left shows the entire page, including the text at the four corners around 1/4 inch from the edges (which used to be a safe distance on all three printers I have available here.). I hit the Print button ... and the page printed, with the top page numbers printed, but the bottom 1/2 inch entirely white, and no dates in the lower corners.

I double checked, by using scp to copy the PDF file over to the server, logged in there, and used lpr to print it. It came out completely correct. Everything on it aligns perfectly with the copy printed from my Macbook Pro, but the locally-printed copy has the footer line (dates in the lower corners), while the copy printed from the Macbook lacks that footer line. A handy rules shows that, on the locally-printed copy, the four chunks of text in the corners are indeed all about 6 mm from the edges in all directions, just where I wanted them, and where Preview's picture shows them on the screen.

(Something else I noticed is that Preview's print window has "Automatically rotate each page" checked. I keep seeing this, and unchecking it. The next time I look, it's checked again. But I don't think that has anything to do with the problem I'm working on. I hope it doesn't. ;-)

So where to I look next?

And if Text Edit's print stuff can edit the "Paper Size" settings, why can't it edit the "Letter" entry? That one worked a few days ago, until something mysteriously changed the bottom margin to a bigger value. You'd think there'd be a way to fix that when something breaks it. I wonder if I can find the settings for the "Letter" page size somewhere, and just edit them with vi ...

That doesn't sound quite right. Tests on the server shows that the printer (HP L7680) can in fact print up to within 3 mm of its edges. The test pages show this, and assorted tests with "real" PDF pages in the past have verified it. It worked from my Macbook up to a few days ago, and tests from the server show that the printer hasn't lost the ability to print close to the edges. In fact, my wife printed a page from her iMac a while ago, and it showed stuff (images and border lines) up to about 4 mm from the edges. It's only from my Macbook Pro that suddenly the bottom 12 mm gets blanked out.

Actually, I did try a test from the server with the "borderless" setting. The software enlarged the image to be bigger than the page, for some reason that I don't understand, but the result was that the printer printed right up to the very edge of the paper; there was ink visible on the edge of the sheet. So the idea that the printer "can't" print close to the edge is wrong. The printer doesn't have a problem here; it's being told by some software on my Macbook Pro to blank out the bottom edge.

I just tried another test of this: I told Preview on the Macbook to print the page at "Scale: 120% ", and checked "No automatic page scaling". Preview showed the text going off the page at the top and right edge, The ink stopped about 3 mm from the top and right edges. But the bottom 12 mm, including the bottom line of text, was blanked out. This, plus the tests on the server, shows that the printer can print up to 3 mm from the edge of an 8.5x11 inch page. And earlier tests that produced the bottom line with only the top half of the characters shows that it isn't just dropping the bottom line; Something on the Macbook is explicitly blanking out the bottom 12 mm (but not doing the same on the top and right edges.

And whatever is doing it doesn't happen on my wife's iMac; she can print close to the bottom edge.

I'm now wondering if I should uninstall the printer on the Macbook, and see if I can reinstall it to match the iMac's settings. But if the problem is something in the Macbooks system libraries that's forcing the 12-mm bottom margin, that probably won't work, either, and the "Letter" paper size settings presumably come from some library file, because it won't permit me to change those numbers.

Anyway, I'll try your suggestions, probably in the morning, and see what happens.

About the Borderless type: I find that when I try setting the Paper Size to "US Letter", it gives me another menu, with "US Letter" and "Borderless 8.5 x 11 in." entries. If I choose the Borderless, it pops up a window with a warning that this is only allowed for HP Premium Plus Photo Paper, which is in what it's set to. It says it's "not available when Paper Type is set to Plain Paper", which it won't allow me to do. (That choice is greyed out.) It seems odd that it would warn me that it won't work for a setting that it won't let me use anyway, and say that I must use the setting that I am using. Anyway, I've tried this "Borderless 8.1 x 11 in." setting, and it comes out the same as the "US Letter" choice, with the bottom 12 mm blank. Both print to nearly the top and right edge if I set the Scale to 120%.

(And that ****** "Automatically rotate each page" is checked again. ;-)