Printing Issues
Need assistance on being able to print from Family Search, it seems as if everything that I try to print has the left-hand side cut off. The only way that I have found not to have this happen is to adjust the size of the document so little that you can not read it. I have tried to use control p to print and with the tools given on the website but to no avail. Can someone answer if this is a problem with anyone else trying to print information? Can someone inform me as to how to adjust the size of the print in order to get all the information on the page and not be cut off?
Answers
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It would be helpful to know a specific item you are trying to print. It is almost always easier to work in specifics rather than in generalities. I rarely print from FS. If it's a record (a census, a birth/marriage/death document), I download it to my computer first. If I need a paper copy, I then print from the downloaded copy.
The index/extract pages do not print as cleanly as they did before the recent changes to the website, but I am not losing the lefthand side.
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One things that I do is PRINT TO PDF (instead of the physical printer)
I think then subsequently actually printing the PDF file to a real physical printer - may often avoid the issue that you report and it also allows you to keep a digital copy of everything.
see:
https://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/print_to_pdf.htm
and these days . . . do we really need to print to paper???
I print to pdf and save my pdf's on a flash drive - I rarely print to paper any more.
and what make me crazy - are people that print a paper copy and then turn right around and scan what they just printed . . . when all they had to do was save/print to pdf - and they woudl have had a digital copy 100 times better quality then what they ended up with.
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I do not use a program for my genealogy research on my computer or have information on a flash drive. All of my information is in print form. Having been in the computer field for 40+ years, love the technology but also know that all your information can be lost in a few seconds. I print only that information that I deem to be relevant to my lineage. Instead of downloading to a PDF file and then printing was hoping to have an answer to how to print without losing the left-hand side of the information. This seems to be redundant to put on a PDF and then print. Thank you for your thoughts on the subject.
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Whether or not you have a genealogy program installed on your PC is neither here nor there.
the point was simply that we live in a day when paper copies are not normally needed.
most all of us have a pdf viewer on our computer - and that is about the only real app needed to view the collection of digital files we can compile on our computer instead of printing.
Yes we are all researching mainly just our lineage - but that can still be thousands of pages . . . or more.
Much better kept on a flash drive and backed up to the cloud than to kill all the trees.
yes a fashdrive can be lost in a second . .
so can papers/books end up lost in a fire
there are a lot of very simple ways to back up a digital copy (flash drive). Anyone who works with technology know - you should NEVER only have one copy of your digital data,
"backing up" a physical book on the other hand is another story.
check out this link on building a digital library
https://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/digital_library.htm
check out my scanning project here:
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and as to how to print without losing the left hand
I think if you print to pdf FIRST - and THEN print the pdf file - I think at least in some cases - you will avoid the losing of the left hand that you are alluding to.
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another way to avoid the left hand loss - is simply to copy and paste the image into a word processor - such as Word
And then shrink the image down to the right size and adjust margins and layout mode and then again print to your printer.
Either pdf or word - allow for the image to be encapsulated into a document that can allow you to ensure the image fits within a printed page.
Where as if you simply send the image directly to a printer - it tries to print the image at the original image size - which may be bigger than a printed page (and thus the image loss on the printer you are encountering)
However many printer controllers do have a "scale to page" option that should even allow you to avoid that problem using that print option.
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As I said before, I print very little to paper these days. My records are backed up in multiple formats in multiple locations, so my risk of loss is low. I'm not trying to convince you to change, just giving you my background.
I just did some experimental printing from FamilySearch to see if we could find a solution for your issue that suits your workflow. What browser do you use to access FamilySearch? I ask because in my testing this evening, I had better results printing from Firefox than from Chrome. I have several other browsers installed, and I'm happy to test printing with those, if another one is your preferred browser.
I download first largely because so many of the record images are quite large and were microfilmed to include a double-wide page plus a border and some background. I don't need that border, unless there is something relevant there, such as a film number or a volume number. By downloading the jpg first, I can crop. I can re-size if needed to better fit a single sheet of paper.
Hope this helps.
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