How To Change Print Scale on a Mac

When printing from some apps it can appear that there is no way to scale the content of a document while printing. But different apps put scaling options in different places. Even when there are no scaling options, you can use other tricks to print at different sizes.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can change the print scale on your Mac.
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Now recently I've been getting a lot of questions about how to change the scaling when printing. For instance instead of printing at 100% maybe print at 110% to make things look a little larger or maybe print at 50% to fit more on a page. How you scale when printing really depends on which app you're using. Some are really straight forward. For instance, here in Notes if I go to File, Print or just use Command P I can see here in the Print Dialogue there is Scaling. It's right in the main section here with Copies, selection of pages, whether to use color and all of that. What you see in the Print Dialogue is always going to depend on which printer you have. So you may see something a little different than me. But in Notes you should always see Scaling and be able to select scaling in here and set it to something a little different. You'll see the changes right here. 
But be careful what you set it to. For instance setting it to 200% means that the note won't fit on the page. Setting to 50% will fit on the page but isn't going to actually rewrap the text or anything. 
Safari works in the same way. If you go to File, Print it's really straight forward. There is Scaling right here. You can change the scale and you can see how this will let you fit more in at least vertically even though it doesn't actually expand the width of the page. Here in Mail it is the same. If I just go to File, Print, or Command P,  I can see Scaling right here and I could adjust it.  
But a lot of times you won't see Scaling at all. For instance in Pages if you go to File, Print, or Command P, there is no Scaling here. You can see there is nothing there. You can look through all the different sections and you won't find any option to Scale it at something other than a 100%. The trick in this situation is to look under the File Menu for a companion to Print, called Page Setup. Page Setup has been there since the beginning of the Mac and it is usually used for setting things like scaling. So when printing from Pages set the scaling here in Page Setup first, like that. Other apps like TextEdit work the same way. Use File, Page Setup and the keyboard shortcut is usually Shift Command P. A lot of third party apps will use this as well. You can see here in Microsoft Word there is Page Setup there which allows you to set the scaling, not when you go to File, Print. 
But sometimes you don't see either option. Here in Reminders there is no Page Setup. If I go to Print there is no option to scale. The same thing in the Calendar App. There is no Page Setup and Print has no scaling option. But there is a backup option for any app that doesn't have any scaling in the Print Dialogue at all. That is to go to the PDF Menu here. Click the little down arrow next to the word PDF and select Open in Preview. This essentially prints the document but sends it as a PDF to the Preview App. Once you're in the Preview App you can continue to the Print Dialogue with the Print button at the bottom right or by choosing File, Print. 
Now Preview has Scaling. You won't find it here in the main Option section but under an area called Preview. If you don't see what's there you can use the Disclosure triangle to open this up. Then you can see Scaling or Scale to Fit. So, for instance, if I wanted to print this calendar at a smaller percentage I can set it here inside of Preview after Printing to Preview. Now you can see the results I'm going to get here. The same thing here with Reminders. I can go to File, Print and instead of using the default 100% there I can select Open in Preview and then once I'm in here I can go to Print. But notice if I say go to110% how it scales it and it remains centered so it is off the middle of the page. One of the things I can do here in Preview is instead of just printing what's there I can go to the Markup Tools. I can use the Selection Tool here. I can grab the area I want to Print, like just say this, Copy with Command C, and then File New From Clipboard. Now I've got a smaller document there. When I go to Print that now I can scale that up to have a bigger list, like that. It's a lot of steps but it will get it done when you have no other option. 
Now there are also apps that have special printing options. In Numbers if you go to File you can see there is no Page Setup. But if you go to Print you actually have an entire Print Setup Screen here, where you can rescale things. So say if I want this to Print and make sure it is just one page wide I can do that. Another app that has special printing options is Photos. So in Photos there is no Page Setup but when you go to Print then you're taken to the special section here and you can choose a variety of different ways to print your Photos. So I can do Fit. I can do Fill. I can do Custom right here and then select photo sizes. I can select a specific size here. I can do a Contact sheet. So there is a lot of things that I could do here to change the size of the photos that are printed. That all happens before you click the Print button here at the bottom right. That takes you to the Print Dialogue which doesn't have a scaling option there. So you have to kind of set things up in Print Setup before you get here. 
Another example or special printing options would be in Calendar. If you go to File, Print here and you look at the options there, there is a lot. For instance you have the Text Size here. I've got it set to big so that I could see this event here. But I could set it to small if I needed to fit more in. 
Now, of course, a lot of times you have the option to simply change the content before you print. So here is a document in TextEdit. If I go to Print it the text looks pretty small. One thing I could just do is select all the text and change the font size and now I can print it and everything is much bigger. If I don't want the document to actually retain that I can just do a quick Command Z for Undo when I'm done printing to go back to the original size. I can do the same thing here in Pages with this list. But another option that helps you fit more on a page is to change the number of columns. So if I Print now you could see it is five pages with a single column in it. But if I select all the text here and then go to Format, Layout I could change the number of columns. So I could say set it to four columns like this and when I print you could see I'm now just going to get two pages but the text is essentially the same size. So this is an example of thinking creatively before you print.
One last option I want to show you, and that is to choose the number of pages per sheet. So, if I go to File, Print here in Pages you could see this is going to be four pages. Now let's say I want to print up a copy of this to bring along for reference or maybe I just want to use less paper. I could scroll down to the Print option and look for Layout. Under Layout I could do Pages Per Sheet. Now watch what happens if I change to two. You could see how it it going to print two pages per sheet of paper. So now I've saved two sheets of paper. Everything is going to be smaller but maybe for this particular use that's okay. I could even go to four and now print this entire document on one sheet of paper.
So this should give you a number of different options for something other than printing your document at a 100% scale. Of course all this should work for printing to a PDF as well.
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “How To Change Print Scale on a Mac”

Jim Terrinoni

1 year ago

Once again, where at the beginning I thought I’ve done this, so why need to watch? Simple, sometimes we do things so automatically that we forget there are more efficient ways to do it. The reminder that a Contact sheet could be done via Photos app rather than Preview was a value for me.

lauren eisen

thank you gary, very helpful as usual

John Russell

Thanks, Gary. I've often been bamboozled by certain printing needs and now I won't be anymore.

Manuel

The trick how to print from Preview is just great. This video saved me, because I can keep my work-flow which no longer worked with Ventura.

Kim

Dera Gary, I have a issue with Print Scaling: By default the Settings are set to scale to 100%, but I need "Scale to fit" as default. I couldn't figure out how to set it up. Even a new default setting does not keep the setting in "Scale to fit". Can you Gary, or anyone else help with this? Thank you!

Gary Rosenzweig

Kim: No, I don't think you can change the default. You have to switch to scale to fit each time.

David Jenner

10 months ago

I have the perfect solution for printing documents from apps that don't offer the Scale percentage box... use 'Monosnap' screen shot tool (free on the AppStore) to draw a marquee around the area you want to print, when the panel pops up just press Cmd P to bring up the Print dialog box and it will automatically rescale to fit the size of your paper in your printer.

David: Using a screenshot would mean a low resolution print. Plus, why with your idea use a third-party screenshot tool when you can do it with the built-in screenshot tool?
If an app doesn't offer scaling, you can usually export a PDF or print to "Preview" and then scale in Preview. But it depends on the specific situation.

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How To Change Print Scale on a Mac

Comments: 8 Responses to “How To Change Print Scale on a Mac”

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