Media type

[CymCat]

How can I select media type on HP Smart Tank 7308 please? I just get a bunch of meaningless codes. Need to be able to print A3 Posters which HP won't do.  Using Adobe poster printing doesn't work - prints A3 onto 4 x A4 sheets with HUGE, pointless margins.  Changing presets is useless - borderless photo printing will only print 6x4. Googling a solution leads down a rabbit warren of complicated driver updates and resets.   Very poor useability compared with basic old Canon Printer. 

[Kuroi_Kenshi]

Hi @CymCat,

Welcome to the HP Support Community!

I understand your frustration, especially when you're trying to print A3 posters and the available media settings are difficult to identify.

One important point is that the HP Smart Tank 7308 supports paper sizes up to A4, so it cannot print an A3 sheet directly. However, you may be able to print an A3-sized poster across multiple A4 sheets using a poster or tiling feature in your printing software.

To help you with the media type settings and poster printing, could you please confirm:

• Are you printing from Windows or macOS?
• Are you using Adobe Acrobat Reader or another Adobe application?
• Could you share a screenshot of the media type options showing the codes you mentioned?
• When using Adobe's poster printing option, are the large margins visible in the print preview or only on the printed pages?

The media type options can vary depending on the operating system and printer driver being used. With these details, we can identify the correct settings and see whether the poster layout can be improved without unnecessary driver resets or reinstallations.

Best regards,
Kuroi_Kenshi

[CymCat]

Hi

Thanks for your quick reply. 

I know the HP 7308 does not support A3 paper. However, I had no trouble printing A3 size doc across 2 x A4 landscape paper on old Canon using Tiling/Poster printing. I have tried using Adobe Reader on Windows 11 for poster printing since HP does not provide this but it creates the huge margins and tries to print across 4 x A4 portrait sheets. I am working with very narrow margins and I can change the tile scale - but I don't want a smaller poster!

I tried to change the Media type options to enable borderless printing in case the margin size was the issue, but those within Print Properties in the HP app are all meaningless: 

Grateful for any advice.

CymCat

[Kuroi_Kenshi]

Hi @CymCat,

Thank you for sharing the screenshots and clarifying what you're trying to achieve.

I understand that you want to reproduce an A3 poster across two A4 sheets at its original size, rather than reduce the poster or print it across four pages.

A couple of things worth checking in Adobe Acrobat Reader:

• Open the PDF and select Print > Poster under Page Sizing & Handling.
• Set Tile Scale to 100% initially.
• Select A4 as the paper size under Printer Properties.
• Check the page orientation. For an A3 landscape document, two A4 portrait sheets placed side by side should reproduce the A3 dimensions.
• Check the print preview to see how many sheets Adobe calculates before printing.

Regarding the media type options in your screenshot, these appear as numerical driver identifiers rather than descriptive names. 

They do not represent the poster layout or tiling settings. 

For ordinary printing, you can use the standard plain-paper setting if it is available in the Basic tab.

Could you please confirm two additional details?

• Is the original PDF page size definitely A3 (420 × 297 mm)?
• When you select Poster at 100% scale with A4 paper selected, does Adobe still show four pages in the preview?

This will help us determine whether the extra pages are caused by the document orientation, page scaling, or the printer's printable-area limitations.

Best regards,
Kuroi_Kenshi