Advanced printing on your Mac

Desired Outcome

Have the ability to apply advanced settings before printing your files
Change the Paper Size
Reduce or enlarge the size of printed file
Scale the document to fit your paper size

Step-by-Step Guide

When you print a document, you use the Print dialogue to select your print settings. To see advanced print settings, click Show Details at the bottom of the dialogue. (If you see a Hide Details button at the bottom, you’re already viewing advanced settings.)

Some apps may not have all the options described below; see the documentation for your app for more information.

The Print dialogue showing advanced print settings, with the options pop-up menu near the middle of the dialogue, within the separator bar. The print options below the separator bar change depending on which option you choose.

Change a document’s paper size

You can specify the paper size when you print.

With a document open on your Mac, choose File > Print.
If you see a Show Details button, click it.
If the Print dialogue has a Paper Size menu, choose a size.

In apps such as Pages or Microsoft Word, you can also specify a page size for a document as you’re working on it. When you print, the document is already formatted to fit the paper size you selected. However, you can choose to scale the document to fit your printer’s paper. To set the document’s page size, choose File > Page Setup, then click the Paper Size menu and choose a size.

In most apps, the Paper Size menu has a Manage Custom Sizes option.

Change the default paper size

If you usually print on a particular size of paper, you can set it as the default paper size, so it’s used whenever you print. (You can still change the paper size in the Print dialogue if you need to.)

The default size is also used as the page size whenever you create a new document in an app, such as Pages. Changing the default size affects only new documents; it doesn’t change previously created documents.

On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Printers & Scanners.
Click the “Default paper size” pop-up menu, then choose a paper size.

Manually feed paper when you print

You can choose to manually feed paper when you print instead of using the printer’s default paper tray (if your printer supports this capability).

With a document open on your Mac, choose File > Print.
If you see a Show Details button, click it.
Click the print options pop-up menu (within the separator bar), then choose Paper Feed.
Click the All Pages From button, then choose Manual Feed from the pop-up menu.

You may need to set your printer to display this feature when you set up the printer.

Reduce or enlarge a printed document

You can specify a percentage of a document’s original size to reduce or enlarge the printed document.

With a document open on your Mac, do one of the following:
- Choose File > Page Set-up. Click the Settings pop-up menu and choose Page Attributes, click the Format For pop-up menu and choose Any Printer. This sets the document’s scale for all documents you print from this app.
- If Page Set-up is not available, choose File > Print. If you see a Show Details button, click it to show all available options.
Type a percentage in the Scale box.
- If you want the document to print larger than the original size, enter a value greater than 100.
- To print the document smaller than its original size, enter a value less than 100.

If you scale a document, it’s a good idea to preview the document before you print it.

Scale a document to fit your printer’s paper

You can scale a document to fit the paper in your printer. For example, if you have an A4 document, you can scale it to fit on 8.5-by-11-inch paper.

With a document open on your Mac, choose File > Print.
If you see a Show Details button, click it.
Click the print options pop-up menu (within the separator bar), then choose Paper Handling.
Select “Scale to fit paper size,” click the Destination Paper Size pop-up menu, then choose your printer’s paper size.

If you want to scale the document only because it’s too big for the printer’s paper, select “Scale down only.” (If this option is selected but the document isn’t too big for the paper you have, the document is printed at its original size.)