All my printers default to a scale of 150%. Whatever i do will not save and changes any printer settings either the defaults or custom settings. Can anyone help me please.
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
You could try a reset of the printing system. Use the action for Lion.
Please note that this will remove all printers from Print & Scan, but not the supporting printer drivers. So you will only have to add the printers again.
I have tried this before and it made no difference, to confirm I tried it again but as before it still defaults the scale to 150%. it is as though there is a file missing where the results of the defaults are stored. Even when i make a new printer settings option the results are just not stored.
From what I can see, any setting made for a particular printer updates a plist file in the hidden user library. So if you open Finder and use the Go > Go to Folder and enter ~/Library, this will take you to your hidden user library. Here you will see the file "com.apple.custompresets.forprinter.printername.plist". When I made changes to any setting in the print dialog for that particular printer, like the scale, this plist file would be updated. So locate this file for your printer and trash it. Then open an application and select to print to this printer. A new plist file should get created.
Thanks for your help. The plist file does exist. I have searched all through the library folder and it is not listed, even with show hidden files set. I can't see any additional settings for Safari as this programme that prints at 150%. Word, Excel print all okay as there is not a scale setting in the same way that Safari does.
Word and Excel have their own Page Setup pane which has the scale setting. So this makes some sense that they are not affected and why the reset did not help.
If Safari has the issue, I would expect that Preview and TextEdit are the same. If you do make a change to one of the settings in the print dialog, does the plist file change? (and I previously should have said to check ~/Library/Preferences).
Yes, I did go to /Library/Preferences but the file does not exist. I also looked through the whole Library folder for anything that may relate to the Printer, my Lexmark printer or Safari.
When I opened a doscument in Preview it defaulted to 97%. When I make changes and save as a preset the changes are not saved. When I go to use the saved preset it has the system default values not my choices.
TextEdit does have the same selection layout.
With Safari when you print a web page with the 150% scale it can't print correctly and words are missing of text documents, if you print in haste and don't manually change the 150% setting you need to reprint it again correctly which is a real pain and a waste.
Just to be clear, /Library/Preferences is different to ~/Library/Preferences. The tilde ( ~ ) indicates the user directory, ie Mac HD > Users > Username > Library
ribit04 wrote:
Yes, I did go to /Library/Preferences but the file does not exist. I also looked through the whole Library folder for anything that may relate to the Printer, my Lexmark printer or Safari.
>>As Pahu says, make sure you are looking in ~/Library/Preferences. The printing files have the com.apple.print prefix.
When I opened a doscument in Preview it defaulted to 97%. When I make changes and save as a preset the changes are not saved. When I go to use the saved preset it has the system default values not my choices.
>>Scale is a page format attribute and the saved setting will not be used while printing. This has always been true, the same as Orientation and Paper Size.
TextEdit does have the same selection layout.
>>What happens if, in TextEdit, you select Page Setup, set the scale to 100% and then select Settings->Save as Default? Does 100% appear in the Scalle field in the other apps?
The file changed when you do this is com.apple.print.PrintingPrefs.
>>Apps implement scale differently, and some don't implement it at all.
>>Hope this helps.
not able save printer defaults as the scale is always 150%
