Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Adobe PDF files are printing out smaller than 8 1/2 by 11; only happens on Firefox not IE.

  • 2 replies
  • 9 have this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I downloaded the latest free version of Adobe Reader.

Now on Firefox, the page view is surrounded by a black screen. I can increase the view size, and have the document fill the whole page. However, when I go to print, the document prints smaller than an 8 1/2 x 11 page with black space (almost as if I scanned something without a cover) all around it.

Not only is it difficult to read some files, I'm wasting black ink.

I happened to be on another site using Internet Explorer and when I downloaded a file using that browser, everything was normal. No unusual size dimensions, no problems printing.

Seems to be a Firefox issue.

Any suggestions?

I downloaded the latest free version of Adobe Reader. Now on Firefox, the page view is surrounded by a black screen. I can increase the view size, and have the document fill the whole page. However, when I go to print, the document prints smaller than an 8 1/2 x 11 page with black space (almost as if I scanned something without a cover) all around it. Not only is it difficult to read some files, I'm wasting black ink. I happened to be on another site using Internet Explorer and when I downloaded a file using that browser, everything was normal. No unusual size dimensions, no problems printing. Seems to be a Firefox issue. Any suggestions?

All Replies (2)

more options

First, you might check whether you are using the new PDF Viewer that went live in Firefox 19 -- which prints PDFs like web pages -- or the Adobe Acrobat plugin. With the plugin, you should have the usual PDF-specific toolbar. If you need to change from the viewer to the plugin, see the steps in this post: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../951147#answer-411853.

When you click the print icon on the Acrobat plugin toolbar, does the preview show that the PDF is much smaller than the space available? You could try the "Fit" option to get a better match.

more options

You can change the action for Portable Document Format (PDF) from Preview in Firefox to use the Adobe Reader or to Always Ask.

You can set the pdfjs.disabled pref to true on the about:config page to disable the build-in PDF viewer and use the Adobe Reader instead.

See also: