Small print from Text Edit

Chris -- My wife had this exact problem. There's a bug in TextEdit. If you have a document open and it's window size is maximized then it comes out on the printer (or Preview too) with teeeeeeny print.

Have the user click the green gumdrop to make the window not maximized (then they can of course drag it to whatever size they want) and the print will come out normal.

You should be able to reproduce this problem as well as its solution on your own machine.

I hope this helps! 🙂

Hi Chris,

Have a look at TextEdit preferences. By default, Plain Text files (.txt) will print using Monaco 10pt (which is small). Rich Text files (.rtf) will print using Helvetica 12pt. Try changing the Plain Text setting to 12pt to see if you prefer this size.

Regards,

Paul

Another possibility is that the presets file is corrupt. This problem was common on Tiger (the print would come out the size of a postage stamp), and the solution then was to throw away the com.apple.print.custompresets.plist file from the Library/Preferences/ folder in your home directory. Make sure TextEdit is relaunched after throwing away the file.

hope this helps

Hi Chris,

Do you know what the file type is that your Dad is printing from TextEdit. Is it rtf or txt?

Also, with the file open, get him to select all the text (Command - A) and then click on the Styles tab. From the menu, select Other and a window appears showing the first line of text and what style has been used. If the file is a rtf then it will show what has been set in preferences (probably Helvetica 12pt).

If it is 12pt but it still prints incredibly small then can you tell us what brand and model of printer he has. Some printers have their own printing defaults and if there is no font data in the spool file then the defaults are used. This is usually the case for txt files but rtf's are okay.

Regards,

Paul

I solved it by creating a new styled document in
TextEdit, and copy/pasting the text from the problem
document into it.

I spoke too soon. It fixes the problem until an edit occurs. So at least I can print when I need to, but have to keep on creating new documents in order to do so 😟

Derek

I think I may have an idea that will work. Try this:

Open a new document in TextEdit. Move your curser up to the menu
bar at
the top of your screen and click on the TextEdit menu, pull down the
menu and high light the preferences and click on it. A new window will
open titled Preferences and you should see two buttons; one labeled
New
Document and the other Open and Save. With the New Document button
highlighted there should be a box labeled Wrap to Page, click on this
box to put a check mark in it. Close this window by clicking on the
red
button in the upper left corner. From now on, your TextEdit documents
should open with a rectangle showing the margins of the paper you have
selected in your Page Setup. If you are printing to normal letter size
paper, this should be US Letter. The quote below illustrates what I am
suggesting is your solution and comes from the TextEdit Help file.

"To set TextEdit to wrap text based on actual paper width, choose
Preferences > "Wrap to Page." A rectangle shows the margins of the
document in the window.

To set the paper size, choose File > Page Setup and select the paper
size and orientation you want to use."



powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Y'know, I had a chance to try bytedump's solution and of course he's right.

I discovered that maybe it's not truly a BUG in TextEdit that makes the print come out tiny, just more of a feature that's so incredibly obscure that any casual user wouldn't be able to figure out why the program prints the way it does.

Just to elaborate on what bytedump explained above -- It turns out that when the text window is set to "wrap to window" then the window width will be used to determine how long the lines are, which in turn determines how big (or small) the text must be in order to fit the window onto the piece of paper. In other words, the text edit window is "scaled to fit" the selected size of paper (8.5 x 11 in most cases). The window width determines the scaling and that's regardless of the amount of text on the lines. You could have only 3 words on each line and the printout still gets scaled to fit the entire window width onto to the paper. The text doesn't get scaled up, only down, so if you make the window smaller than the page width you only get the text at its set font size not bigger (though wrapped with however it looks in the current window).

SO... if your TextEdit window is wider than the piece of paper the app starts scaling down the text to fit the width of the entire window onto the paper (even if no down-scaling is necessary because the text at its font size wouldn't extend out beyond the page width). Once the window is wider than the amount of text that'll fit on a page width, then the wider the window, the smaller the text.

The setting for "wrap to page" can be set either in the preferences as bytedump suggests or to apply it to the window already open the command is under the menu Format -> Wrap To [Page | Window]

Or you can just resize the window to a size equal to or smaller than the paper, but that's harder to guess than just using the Wrap To Page.

So I was wrong it's not a bug -- fer sure don't credit me for the solution. 🙂

PB G4, Mac Mini G4, MacBook Pro, MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Is there a fix available yet? 🙂

Fix:
bytedump wrote the solution above. You can either ...

- resize the window
- select "wrap to page" in preferences
- select "wrap to page" under the Format menu

🙂

Also make sure that Format is set to Wrap to Page, rather than Wrap to Window.

I have this problem too, with my HP DeskJet 932C printer (if that helps.)

Is there a fix available yet? 🙂