Scaling to Avoid Paper Waste

As part of an effort to not print so much, I have been saving many items to my devices (usually PDF's) or saving (clipping) to a note taking app. When I do print, I prefer to use as little paper as possible, so the tip below is useful to me. I hope someone out there also finds it useful. 

When you select to print a document from the internet, you might end up with an extra page that only has between one and five lines on it. Maybe you don't mind having that extra sheet of paper with the one to five lines, maybe you do. If you do mind, keep reading and learn about one way that you can avoid this.

Below you will see sample images with a recipe that I selected to print. I had planned to test out the recipe too but a Hurricane delayed those plans. 

If you want to check out the recipe for yourself, or just use it to test out this tip, head over to Jo Cooks and print yourself a copy of the No Knead Dutch Oven Crusty Bread. 

Now back to the tip... 

You will see inside the oval that this recipe currently requires two sheets of paper to print. The arrows on the right are there to show you what text will be moved and where it will be moved to once we adjust the scale setting. 

Notice the black rectangle on the left side near the center of the sample image. Inside the rectangle there is a + and the words More settings. 

You will need to point with your mouse and click on the words More settings.

This will open up additional options and one of those options will be the scale setting. This is the setting we will adjust.

The scale setting is generally set at 100 (100%) which you can see inside the black rectangular box in the next sample image.

I find that I only need to adjust the scale a small amount, usually from about one to ten percent less. 

So instead of a scale of 100%, you will adjust down from about 99% to as much as 90%. 

In this sample there was about four lines of text and a line of space. This required an adjustment down to 90%.

If you have a page with only one line of text, it may only require an adjustment of 1-3% less. I usually adjust my settings based on the goal of not having a page with only one to five lines on it and making sure that my printed page is still easy to read.

 

You can adjust less or more depending on your needs. That is it for this quick tip. I hope you found this useful. 

The sample images were edited in *Paint.net, and the watermark was created with *UMark. *No affiliation, I just like them and find them useful.

Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out the blog!