Efficient Printing – tips and tricks
1. (Don’t print!)
The first rule of efficiency is to Reduce. If you can read off the screen, then this is the preferred
option, especially if it’s something that you only need to read once. Most Office applications offer options
for highlighting and making notes electronically, from your screen (see p. 5 of this document).
Also, be sure that you’ve got the document content and print settings right before printing out multiple
copies, in order to avoid waste.
The second rule is Reuse. If you’ve got paper that ends up printed on only one side or even half
a side, you might consider reusing that as scrap paper. E.g. you might use scrap paper to make notes off an
email instead of printing the email off.
2. Formatting
You can temporarily adjust the document layout before printing to ensure more efficient printing. In
particular, here are some things you can do:
Use narrow margins
You can adjust the document margins
and orientation under Page Layout.
Margins take up often unnecessary
space and reducing them can save
pages of printing.
Also consider that different
orientations might be optimal for
different content e.g. tables.
Print only what you need
If you only really need a couple of pages, you can print a custom range (see print settings on the next
page).
Also, you can temporarily remove unnecessary spaces, page breaks, images before printing to save space.
Adjust font size
Hit Ctrl+A to Select All of the document and then decrease the font by one or two points:
Adjust font size in the Home tab.
Titles and headings are also often unnecessarily big (with respect to printing) and reducing them can
sometimes help save pages too.
3. Print settings
WORD
Print only a custom range
Do you need to print everything? E.g.
cover sheets, indexes, references and
appendices can often be left out.
Double-sided printing should be the
default setting. If it is not, contact IT to
have this rectified.
Landscape is often a good setting for
spreadsheets and tables (although best
adjusted from the Page Layout tab)
Printing with narrow margins can save
up to a couple of pages, depending on
document size. Again, best adjusted in
the document itself from the Page
Layout tab.
Print 2 Pages Per Sheet
If your eyes can handle it, this is
another way to halve your paper use.
Aim to print even numbers of pages so
that you don’t end up with something
like this:
ACROBAT
Print multiple pages
per sheet
Scroll through to preview how the
document will print.
Adjust the orientation (this should be
adjusted automatically to the
orientation of the document)
POWERPOINT
Do you need to print all slides?
Consider what part of the power point
you need to print (slides for reference,
larger slides for details, space for
notes?)
EXCEL
*
Under the View tab, go to Page Break
Preview where you can define what
content will be printed per page.
You can do this by dragging the blue
dashed lines shown below:
BEFORE
AFTER
*Excel spreadsheets often print better in Landscape orientation, which can be set in the Page Layout tab
4. Reading on screen
E.g. text formatting options for
highlighting text on screen
You can use comments to make notes
on screen.
Use the slider at the bottom right corner of
document to change the magnification.
Zoom in to read on screen; Zoom out to view
overview of whole document in one frame.
If you need to view two documents at the same
time, minimize and drag them to arrange them side
by side on your screen.
5. Copying double-sided:
-
Swipe your card to log-in to the printer
Hit the home button and then choose ‘copy’
In the copy tab, select the 12 sided under 2 Sided copy
Everything you copy will then be printed double-sided.
A video (1 min 42 sec) of this can be found here. For more useful demo videos relating to the copy machines click
here.
Are you considering printing this document?
1. Do you really need to print it? Or perhaps you only want to print certain pages? For instance, you
probably don’t need to print this last page (
). Print Custom Range: p 1-6.
2. Consider printing it two pages per sheet. As this is a six-page document printing in this way will use
up two pages of paper, rather than three if you print one page per sheet (double-sided).
3. The margins and font size in this document have already been adjusted (narrow margins, 11/12
point font) to make this document printable and legible in the ‘two pages per sheet’ format. Feel
free to play around with these to see what happens.
**Reducing print volumes
All services are required to reduce their print volumes or incur the cost of printing. Print
volumes are measured in ‘clicks’. A click is a single printed page, regardless of how much
of its area is printed on (e.g. single or double sided, multiple pages per sheet). In other
words, every page that you can save counts!