HP Photosmart 7520 - Windows 7 - Double Sided Printing Shrinks Word 10 Text Margins

[PW_UK]

Thanks for the information about an alternative printer which does not show this unacceptable behaviour. I have the same problem with my HP 6510:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-One-Software-Drivers-e-g-Windows-8/Duplex-margins-and-di...

but the Customer Services in the UK just claimed it was in the specification (nonsense, of course) and certainly wouldn't consider replacing it, nor even permit a sensible dialogue with someone who was techically competent.

[Mary_Ellen]

I would be persistent and polite and not give up.  Perhaps taking it to the next level or tier of troubleshooting technicians.  It is patently obvious this is an unacceptable shortcoming in an otherwise good printer.  Good luck.

[CarolW-Y]

This happened with my last HP printer and was one of the reasons I bought a new one.  All the "help" on the old printer consisted of finger-pointing.  Proper margins on both sides of the paper is important for my work.  If I had known this was an HP problem (and yes, please tell your engineers it is a problem if it negatively affects the functonality of the machine for the user), I would have tried another brand.  I certainly will on my next printer. 

[mj0728]

Just installed the HP 7520 today and first used it for printing photos. Worked fine, but when i wanted to print Word Documents in duplex, it widened the margins and shrunk (shrank?) the font size. At first it did duplex, but now it won't. i get an message that the letter size paper and two sided printing are "incompatible". It also won't let me change the type of paper from photo to plain. I can't find a "print preview" option in the printer Properties and it won't let me print a "fast draft". All of which I could do with the Officejet 4500 that I replaced. Haven't called HP yet, but hope there is a solution to this. Anybody????

[mj0728]

This not a solution! This printer is touted as being able to auto duplex!

[Frannie57]

I cannot believe that HP is trying to pass this off as acceptable! They address it so matter-of-factly here, but I think if they even asked their own employees if it was a good idea to engineer a duplex printer that automatically forced a reduced print size, their employees would say "no thanks". 

My work-around: I installed an Inkjet 6980 driver on my 7525 to do auto-duplex printing on Windows 7. My document has a .5" margin on all sides, and it prints at actual size just fine. There is no ink smudging where a roller might have picked up ink. This is not an acceptable solution to me however.

To say the printer is a duplex printer yet not be able to print at actual size with even 1.5" margins is ridiculous. It makes me think HP is sliding in the quality it used to produce. I've had printer drivers that warn that the page might be cut off on the edge because it doesn't allow enough for the gripper rollers, but this is acceptable to me and gives me an option of reducing it by a percentage rather than it get trimmed off.

I spent 45 minutes with a technician who wasted a lot of my time by not relaying her instructions to me clearly and never resolved anything before I had to cut her off to get back to work. BTW, she told me that plugging the printer into a power strip or surge protector would indeed cause all functions on the printer to malfunction. REALLY?!?!? She said all HP printers have a built-in surge protector. She couldn't tell me how many joules it protected against, and I live in lightning country and am not willing to take it off my surge protector to find out because I'm pretty sure HP would find a reason to decline replacing the printer if it burned up in a storm.

Although I'm happy with the print quality of this printer, this experience (a printer that touts auto-duplexing but can do so only with restrictions... and HP reps acting like it shouldn't be a surprise that duplexing means print reduction... or even trying to tell me that a power strip will cause the printer to malfunction?) is enough to make me think twice before ever buying an HP product again.

[Mary_Ellen]

I had this EXACT same problem with that printer last year. I went through the same channels of command in addition to sending images of the "shrinking margins." 

This problelm could not be fixed.  It must be a flaw in the design of the printer. The end result was that HP replaced my printer with the 8600 Office Jet Pro. 

It took a long time, but HP finally acknowledged the problem.

[Marlton]

I'm having the same issue and some others, but HP did install the 6980 driver which did fix my other issues, but I only see manual duplexing, not automatic? ( I have a 7520)

[Marlton]

This is not what happens. No matter what size margin you set, the 7520 adds a 1/4" all around, when duplexing.

I can understand the need for added margin when duplexing, but even when there is more than enough, it still adds a 1/4" on all four sides.

I set an "unformatted" Word document to "0" margins and the result is a 1/2" on each long edge, and about 5/8" at top and bottom (but some type top/bottom was cut off). So it would appear the printer needs about 3/4" top and bottom and about a 1/2" on the sides.

This is really a problem, and the printer I had before this did not add the 1/4" no matter what the margin was set at.

Word will warn you when you are about to print a document that is outside the margins the printer requires. And the printer should "know" when the formatted document has sufficient margins and make no adjustments.

This needs to be fixed.

[PW_UK]

I agree that it needs to be fixed: the problem applies to a host of HP printers. See my posting at:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-One-Software-Drivers/Duplex-margins-and-distortion/m-p/2...

I am afraid that HP do not seem to think it is a problem at all (at least the UK Customer Services do not), so I came up against a brick wall. Good luck.