Pasted images are cropped when printed

[Pooka780]

I use the Snipping Tool quite often.  Since purchasing the HP Envy 4500 printer, when I paste snipped images to Word, the image looks fine in Print Preview.  However, when I print the document, the snipped image is enlarged and does not fit in the pasted area.  I only get a portion of the image on paper.

[futbolfletch]

I have the same problem.  Did you find a solution since you posted this?  I've tried to print snipped images twice now and both times they were enlarged when printing and I didn't get the whole image.

[futbolfletch]

I attempted to do a small work around.  I took a snipped image, saved it as a picture; using Microsoft Word I added a square, then for the background of the square I added my saved image.  

I printed this image, which looked totally fine in print preview mode, but when I printed ihis it was once again overly enlarged and I could only see the same amount as I could see before.  

Why the heck is this occurring?  So very weird, I've never had this problem with other printers with snipped images.

[Pooka780]

The only solution I've found is to paste the snip in Paint, and then copy that image and paste it to Word. It is so frustrating that HP can't come up with a solution. They think it is a Microsoft problem.

[futbolfletch]

Well isn't that something!  Pasting the snipped image into paint, copying it, and then pasting it into Word allowed me to print exactly what I wanted to see!

Weird workaround, but hey, if it works, I'll do it!  

Thanks for your help!

[JohnDM]

I have had exactly the same problem.  I have found that the setting that causes this in Windows 7 is the text setting value in the Control Panel, Display Window settings where you can choose the size of text.  If you select the Default 100% setting all these problems disappear but you end up with very small characters on high resolution screens.

If you choose 125% the effect is very apparent.  If you choose150% the effect is twice as bad.  This setting also affects Excel 2007 in a strange way.  If you use the Custom Sort facility many times during a single Excel session, the Search Window gets a little bigger each time ending up by filling the whole screen.  At 100% setting (the default) no such behaviour is seen.

I have failed to find any explanation of this on the Web but keep trying.  The workaround I use is to take the Clip of the wanted part of the image and use the Clip's Save As menu to save it temporarily as a PNG file.  Then I can import the graphic into Word using the Insert, Picture selection and choosing the PNG file previously saved.  It's a little tedious but until somebody can find out what is going on  (or even which software house is causing the malfunction) that's probably the best we can do.

[JohnDM]

Since sending my reply I have realised that I had another piece of information that is highly relevant.  The system that showed this behaviour had not shown it for the five years I had used a Canon Pixma Inject printer.  The unwanted cropping and scaling of clipped images only started happening recently after an hp2540 Deskjet was connected.

When I printed the same Word documents on an old Kyocera Laserjet printer, the effects didn't occur and the printed image was the same as the Print Preview.  So it does seem that the problem must be with the printer driver software not recognising the setting of the Text Size setting in the Display Window.

[futbolfletch]

Hello JohnDM,

Thanks for posting this alternate work around.

I did as you suggested.

Took the snip, saved it as a PNG, inserted it using the Insert->Picture method, and printed it.

It printed correctly! Woohoo!

I also tried this, 

Took the snip, saved it as a PNG, copied the image that I had saved, pasted the image onto the Word doc, and printed it.

This also printed correctly the image correctly.  (In short, I did the same thing as your step, I just did it another way - I wanted to see if it'd work).

Lastly, just for the heck of it...

Took the snip, copied it using the copy feature of the snipping tool, pasted it into Word doc, and printed it.

It printed incorrectly.  Only half of the image printed on the printout; the image on my computer screen showed it should've printed as a whole.  

Looks like I'll continue to use workarounds if I have to print a snipped image.

Thanks for passing along the information and have a good day!

[JT-Canada]

Thank you .... thank you ....  thank you.

I've always used HP printers with no problems.  I just got a new HP Envy and tried everything under the sun to print pictures properly.  Thanks for your solution.

[JohnDM]

Since I wrote my workaround for this graphics printing problem I have found a better solution.

If you are running Windows 7 64 bit with the screen display set to enlarge by 125% or 150% and you paste an image from the Clipboard into a Word 7 document, it will look fine on the screen and in the Print Preview.  When you print it on an hp Deskjet 2540 you will find all of the pasted graphics will have been expanded but the bounding box hasn't.  This will result in the bottom and right sides of the graphic being cropped.

The simplest solution I have found to workaround this is to Snip and paste as normal and when the document is ready for printing use the Save As and create a PDF file.  Load the PDF file back into the PC and then print that.  Now the document will print as you saw it in the Word Print Preview.

If you print the Word document to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer this will create a print file.  Then if you double click the XPS file it will load the Microsoft XPS Viewer and display the document with the same graphic clipping faults as when you make a paper print copy.  This saves paper and ink when you are experimenting!

The fault seems to be in the Microsoft XPS software.  I read that Microsoft have all but abandoned this format since the Adobe PDF so dominates the planet.

Hope this helps.