Printer Cutting Off the Edges or Bottom of the Page? How to Fix It

Quick answer: in the print dialog, set scaling to "Fit to printable area" (or "Shrink oversized pages" in a PDF reader) and confirm the paper size in the dialog matches the paper actually in the tray. That fixes most cut-off pages in ten seconds. If it does not, you are hitting your printer's unprintable margin — every printer has a strip at the edges, usually 3–5 mm, where it physically cannot place ink or toner — and the document needs its margins widened rather than the printer fixed.

Text vanishing off the bottom, the right-hand column of a spreadsheet missing, a shipping label with the barcode clipped, an email that prints three-quarters of its width — these all look like a printer fault and almost never are. There are exactly three underlying causes, and once you know which one you have, the fix is quick. This guide covers how to tell them apart, then walks through the settings app by app, because the control you need is in a different place in Word than it is in Chrome, Excel, Acrobat or Outlook.

The Three Real Causes

Cause	How you recognize it	Fix
Wrong paper size	Content is cut on the right and bottom by a consistent amount; often an A4 document sent to a Letter printer or the reverse	Match paper size in the app, the driver and the tray
No scaling applied	Document is genuinely bigger than the page — a wide spreadsheet, a web page, a poster	Turn on Fit to page / Shrink to fit
Unprintable margin	A thin sliver missing all the way round, or a header/footer clipped right at the edge	Widen the document's margins to at least 0.25 in / 6 mm

A fourth, much rarer cause exists on inkjets: a physical misfeed that shifts the paper in the path. If the missing strip is a different width on each page, or the whole image sits visibly off-center and crooked, that is a feeding problem rather than a settings one — see printer won't pick up paper.

Every Printer Has a Dead Zone

This is the part most people do not know, and it explains why "set margins to zero" never works. Printers grip the sheet with rollers as it travels, and they cannot print where the rollers are. The bottom edge is usually worst, because the sheet has to be held by its trailing edge as the last lines are printed.

Printer type	Typical unprintable margin	Notes
Consumer inkjet	3 mm sides and top, 3–15 mm bottom	Bottom margin is often much larger than the others
Inkjet in borderless mode	0 mm	Only on supported paper sizes; the image is slightly enlarged and cropped
Consumer / office laser	4–5 mm all round	More consistent than inkjet, rarely adjustable
Production laser	2–4 mm	Some support edge-to-edge with a trim step
Thermal label printer	1–2 mm	Media width setting matters more than margins

Practical consequence: if your document has 0.25 inch (6 mm) margins or more, you will never hit the dead zone on a normal printer. If it has margins of 0.1 inch or a footer sitting 5 mm from the edge, you will. Widening the document is the fix — there is no setting that makes the printer print where it cannot reach.

Fix It by Application

Google Chrome and Edge (Web Pages)

Press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on Mac), then click More settings. Set Scale to "Fit to printable area", or choose Custom and try 90%. Check Paper size matches your tray. If the page is still clipped on the right, the site has a fixed-width layout — try landscape orientation, or look for a print-friendly or reader view on the page first.

Chrome also has a Margins setting. "Default" is usually right; "None" is what causes clipped content, because it asks the printer to print into its dead zone.

Microsoft Word

Three things to check, in order:

1. Layout → Margins. If any margin is under 0.25 in, raise it. Word will warn you "One or more margins are set outside the printable area" — that warning is telling you exactly what is about to happen. Click Fix when offered.
2. Layout → Size. Must match the paper in the tray. A document created from an A4 template printed on US Letter loses roughly half an inch off the bottom.
3. File → Print → Scale to paper size. Set it to your actual paper size rather than "No scaling".

If a header or footer is being clipped, it has its own margin setting: Layout → Margins → Custom Margins → Layout tab → "From edge: Header / Footer". Values below 0.3 in will clip on many printers.

Microsoft Excel

Spreadsheets are the most common source of this complaint, because a sheet has no natural page width. Excel will happily cut a table in half and put the remaining columns on page 2 — or off the page entirely if the print area is set wrong.

• Page Layout → Scale to Fit → Width: 1 page. Leave Height as Automatic. This is the single setting that solves most Excel printing complaints.
• Page Layout → Orientation → Landscape for wide tables.
• View → Page Break Preview shows you exactly where the cuts fall, with draggable blue lines.
• Page Layout → Print Area → Clear Print Area if part of your data is being ignored entirely — a stale print area is a classic cause of "Excel is cutting off my columns".
• If text inside a cell is cut off but the column is visible, the row height is too small for the wrapped text. Select all, then Format → AutoFit Row Height.

We go deeper on spreadsheet layout in how to print an Excel spreadsheet that actually fits.

PDFs — Adobe Acrobat, Preview, Edge

In Acrobat Reader's print dialog, under Page Sizing & Handling, choose Fit or Shrink oversized pages. Avoid "Actual size" unless you specifically need exact dimensions. Tick Choose paper source by PDF page size if the document mixes sizes.

A PDF built at A4 printed on Letter will lose the bottom 18 mm at actual size; Fit solves it. On macOS Preview, the equivalent is Scale to Fit → Print Entire Image.

One Acrobat-specific trap: if the PDF was created with a bleed or crop box larger than the trim box, Acrobat may print the larger box. Under Page Sizing & Handling there is a "Use custom paper size when needed" option, and in Advanced there are crop-box settings worth checking on files that came from a designer.

Outlook and Gmail

Emails are HTML, so they behave like web pages — a fixed-width email or a wide signature image will clip. In Outlook, File → Print → Print Options → Page Setup lets you set margins and, on the Paper tab, scaling. In Gmail, the print view opens in the browser, so use Chrome's scale setting described above.

For a stubbornly wide email, the reliable workaround is to print to PDF first, open the PDF, and print it with Fit enabled. That two-step route handles almost anything.

iPhone and iPad

AirPrint gives you very few controls, which is why "iPhone cuts off print" is such a common search. Options:

• In the share sheet, some apps offer a scaling or "Fit to page" toggle before you hit Print — look before printing.
• Tap Options in the print preview and confirm paper size.
• For web pages, tap the reader-view icon (the AA in Safari's address bar → Show Reader) before printing. Reader view reflows the content to the page width and eliminates clipping.
• For anything complex, use the share sheet to save as PDF first, then print the PDF — this is where the scaling controls live.
• If you use your printer's own app (HP Smart, Canon PRINT, Epson iPrint, Brother iPrint&Scan), it exposes far more layout control than AirPrint does.

macOS (Any App)

In the print dialog, click Show Details if you only see the compact version. Then set Scale to a value under 100%, or look for "Scale to fit → Print entire image". Also check the Paper Size dropdown — macOS offers both "US Letter" and "US Letter (Borderless)", and picking the wrong one changes the printable area. Printing from a Chromebook narrows the options further — our Chromebook printing guide covers what you do and do not get there.

Google Docs and Sheets

File → Page setup for margins and paper size. In Sheets, File → Print gives you a Scale option with "Fit to width" and "Fit to page" — the same logic as Excel. Docs does not scale on print, so margins are the only lever. Slide decks have their own quirk — see printing PowerPoint and Google Slides with speaker notes.

Fix It at the Driver Level

If the problem happens in every application, the printer's own defaults are wrong. Open the printer's properties — on Windows, Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Printers & scanners → your printer → Printing preferences — and check:

• Paper size matches the tray. This is the default for every job from every app.
• Paper source points at the tray you are actually using. A driver set to a photo tray while you load the main cassette produces odd positioning.
• Scaling / Page fit — many drivers have their own scaling setting that fights with the application's. If both are set, the results are unpredictable. Set the driver to 100% / no scaling and control it from the app.
• Borderless off, unless you are deliberately printing photos edge to edge.

Also worth doing once: remove and reinstall the printer driver if it was set up years ago or migrated from an old machine. Stale drivers carry stale page setups, and a generic driver installed automatically by Windows often does not know your printer's real printable area. Our guide to printer drivers covers when the manufacturer's full driver is worth installing over the built-in one.

Borderless Printing: What It Actually Does

Borderless mode does not eliminate the dead zone — it works around it by enlarging the image slightly and printing past the edges of the paper, letting the overspill fall into an absorbent pad inside the printer. Two consequences worth knowing:

• You lose a few millimeters of image at every edge, because the enlarged image is cropped by the paper. Do not use it for anything where content sits near the edge.
• It is only available on supported paper sizes, and usually only on photo paper. If borderless is grayed out, the selected size or media type does not support it.
• The overspray collects in a waste pad. On Epson models this pad has a counter and eventually triggers a service message — heavy borderless printing brings that day forward.

Shipping Labels Cut Off

A specific and annoying case. Shipping labels from carriers and marketplaces are usually 4×6 inch PDFs, and the problems are predictable:

• Printing a 4×6 label on Letter paper at actual size puts it in a corner and can clip it. Use Fit, or select the 4×6 paper size if your printer supports it.
• Thermal label printers need the media size set in the driver, not just in the app. A driver set to 4×6 printing on 4×4 stock clips the bottom every time.
• Label printers need calibration after a media change — most have a feed/calibrate button or routine that teaches the printer where the gaps between labels are. Skipping it causes progressive drift, where each label is cut slightly worse than the last.
• If the barcode specifically is clipped, do not scale down to compensate — a shrunken barcode may not scan. Fix the media size instead. Our guide to printing labels at home covers Avery templates and sheet alignment, and printing on envelopes has the same media-size trap.

Brand Notes

HP: HP Smart's print preview has a scaling control that overrides the app's. If prints are fine from one program and clipped from HP Smart, that is why. LaserJets typically have a 4.2 mm unprintable margin on all four sides.

Canon: PIXMA drivers have a "Page Layout" tab with Scaled and Fit-to-Page options, plus an "Extended Copy Amount" slider that controls how far borderless printing overshoots. If borderless photos are losing too much at the edges, reduce that slider.

Epson: Check "Borderless" and the "Expansion" slider on the Main tab. Epson also has a "Minimize Margins" setting on some models that reduces the bottom margin at a small cost in print quality near the edge.

Brother: Brother's driver puts scaling under the Basic tab as "Scaling → Fit to Paper Size". Brother lasers have a fairly generous 4 mm margin all round and rarely clip unless the document margins are extreme.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my printer cutting off the bottom of the page?

Usually because the document is sized for different paper than what is loaded, or because the content extends into the printer's unprintable bottom margin — which on many inkjets is significantly deeper than the other three sides. Set scaling to "Fit to printable area" and confirm the paper size matches the tray. If instead the page stops halfway down and the rest comes out blank, that is a different fault — see why your printer only prints half a page.

Why does my printer cut off the right side of the page?

Most often an A4 document printed on US Letter. A4 is narrower but taller than Letter, so the reverse mismatch clips the right edge. Change the document's paper size, or enable Fit to page.

Can I set my margins to zero?

You can set them, but the printer cannot honor them. Every printer has a mechanical dead zone at the edges. The only way to print genuinely edge to edge is borderless mode on a supported inkjet and paper size, and that works by overprinting and cropping rather than by removing the dead zone.

Why do my web pages print cut off on the right?

Fixed-width page layouts wider than the paper. Set Chrome's scale to "Fit to printable area", try landscape, or use the browser's reader view, which reflows the text to whatever width is available.

My Excel spreadsheet loses the last few columns. What is the setting?

Page Layout → Scale to Fit → Width: 1 page, with Height left on Automatic. Also check that a stale print area is not excluding data: Page Layout → Print Area → Clear Print Area.

Why do my shipping labels print cut off?

The paper or media size in the driver does not match the label stock, or a thermal printer has not been calibrated since the media changed. Set the exact media size in the driver and run the printer's calibration routine. Do not fix it by scaling down — a shrunken barcode may fail to scan.

Everything prints fine from my laptop but gets cut off from my phone. Why?

AirPrint and the Android default print service expose very few layout controls, so they print at actual size with default margins. Save as PDF first and print the PDF, or use your printer manufacturer's own app, which gives you scaling options.

Could this be a hardware fault rather than a setting?

Rarely, but yes. If the clipped area varies page to page, the whole image sits crooked, or the problem appeared alongside noise or misfeeds, the paper is not being positioned consistently in the path. That is a feed problem, not a margin problem — start with the paper path.

Keep Printing

Once the whole page is landing on the paper, the next thing to run out is usually ink. Castle Ink stocks compatible and remanufactured cartridges, toner and drum units for virtually every printer on the market — find yours on the Find Ink by Printer page, or work through more fixes at our printer troubleshooting center.

Restocking while you're here? Browse HP, Canon, Epson and Brother ink, or Brother and HP toner.