Cannot centre poster content in Publisher

[Autofac]

Hello,

Fairly new to Publisher and a bit ignorant, so apologies in advance.

I have recently used it to design a one page tabloid sized poster for printing on our Toshiba copier.

To date, I have never had any problems printing posters of any size from either programs like Word, or from JPGs or PDFs designed with services like Canva and then exported to my computer.

I designed the poster in Publisher but no matter what I do I keep getting the same bizarre white border around it (see attached), with the border being thicker on the right and top than the left and bottom. It is as if the margins of the document are out of whack. I know that our printer doesn't do edge-to-edge printing, and that's fine, all posters always have some white border, but they are always even.

At first I thought it was because the document was set up as the first page in a spread, and when I turned off preview mode, I could see that the margins were aligned as if Publisher was expecting more pages, and I was making my poster on the first right-hand page in the series. I changed that so the margins all align only to this page (if you know what I mean).

I also thought that this may be a problem with Affinity jiving with the printer drivers, but even when I export to a PDF, PNG, or JPG from Publisher, and print from "preview" on my Mac, the weird margins persist, which makes me think that it is something I have not changed or properly setup in Affinity and the problem is being exported with it. This problem happens no matter the paper size I try to print with.

I have done searches for similar problems and threads but haven't found anything that addresses this specifically.

Thank you in advance for any help.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Autofac

[Komatös]

Hello and welcome to the forums, @Autofac

Which version do you use? 

[Autofac]

3 minutes ago, Komatös said:

Hello and welcome to the forums, @Autofac

Which version do you use? 

I have worked on both my office and personal computer, and each use 1.10.4.

[walt.farrell]

38 minutes ago, Autofac said:

but even when I export to a PDF, PNG, or JPG from Publisher, and print from "preview" on my Mac, the weird margins persist

When you view the exported file, is the design properly centered in whatever application you're using to view it?

[Autofac]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

When you view the exported file, is the design properly centered in whatever application you're using to view it?

It has slight borders, but is centred.

Attached is what I see in Affinity and what I see in Preview after exporting.

[RM f/g]

In the picure in your original post: is it not simply the unequal printer margins we are looking at?

[Autofac]

4 minutes ago, RM f/g said:

In the picure in your original post: is it not simply the unequal printer margins we are looking at?

I suppose it could be, and that was my original thought, but it's only a problem I've ever encountered with documents produced with Affinity. I've done dozens of posters like this in other apps, many of which also exported to computer and printed via preview, and I've never had this problem.

In the Spread or Document Setup window I made sure to click so that Affinity pulled margins from printer, but whether I click that or not it doesn't make a difference. Even if I make the margins all equal, the result is the same.

[Lee D]

@Autofac Have you tried exporting to PDF and then opening up and checking to see if the document has visible margins. You can also try printing the PDF to see if this has the same margins/borders?

[Autofac]

3 hours ago, Lee D said:

@Autofac Have you tried exporting to PDF and then opening up and checking to see if the document has visible margins. You can also try printing the PDF to see if this has the same margins/borders?

Nothing visible on the export, it looks just as every other PDF I've exported from other places and printed on the same printer without issue.

And I have printed this document directly from Affinity, from a PDF export from Affinity, and from a JPG export from affinity, and I've tweaked all kinds of settings and it comes out exactly the same each time.

[RM f/g]

Something to do with the printer settings?

Printing a document smaller than the paper size and not set to align to centre in printer dialog?

[Autofac]

On 12/2/2021 at 7:25 AM, RM f/g said:

Something to do with the printer settings?

Printing a document smaller than the paper size and not set to align to centre in printer dialog?

I am thinking it may be printer settings, but I cannot figure out it is exactly.

There are no options to align it to centre and while this printer is probably capable of providing more options for printing, I've never been able to view advanced settings despite having downloaded the drivers from the Toshiba website. That may be it, but I just find it funny that the same poster exported to PDF or JPG from Canva prints without issue.