Setting up a form layout for printing.

[Simon B]

Hello,

I am trying to design a form layout that would easily print on pdf on a A4 format.

My idea was that as long as I respect the aspect ratio of the A4 (1.414) on the body size of my layout, I would be able to export to pdf as is and Filemaker would scale to fit the layout on the A4 pdf page.

 

Turns out it doesn't seem to work like that:

- It always adds the margin for printer which I don't really need, if a user wants to print, he would print the outputted pdf not straight from filemaker.

- it doesn't print the full layout but limit itself to a portion of the layout (ie 842 * 595 points minus the margins) from what I understand.

 

So, I could constrain all the fields on my layout to the 842*595-margins size and resize down all the elements to fit that space, but I feel that there might be a better/easier solution.

 

Is there a way to make it work the way I want ?

 

Thanks,

Simon (Filemaker 19.6.3 on Mac Ventura.)

[comment]

The size of A4 is 21 x 29.7 cm. If you want your layout to fit fully into A4, then set its size to 21 x 29.7 cm  and its margins (in Layout Setup -> Printing) to 0. Then choose the A4 paper size in Page Setup.

With these settings, when you Save/Send Records as PDF, you'll get the full size of the A4 format, with no margins (see the attached example). However, the result may be different when you print to an actual printer (real or virtual). That's why you get a warning when you adjust layout margins to 0. 

 

A4.pdf

Edited March 4 by comment

[Simon B]

Thanks comment, very useful answer as usual.

It works, but I was hoping to not have to change all the font sizes and elements of the layout to fit the available space. No a big deal.

 

Thanks,

Simon

[comment]

In Page Setup you also have the option to scale the output (may not work on Windows). This is specified as a percentage, there is no 'scale-to-fit' option. But some printers do offer this in their Print dialog.

Make sure you have View > Page Breaks turned on, so you can see when you exceed the available space.

 

Edited March 4 by comment