Word says "outside margins" prints extra page

I use a Zebra 2844 (UPS label printer) to print address labels for customer packages. After a lot of effort and loading, unloading drivers, I finally got it to print UPS labels (when I call it the UPS printer using their driver) and labels from Endicia (when I call it the Zebra 2844 and use their driver)

However, whenever I print a label on this printer regardless of what I call it, out of Word (office 2003 version) it always says the same thing, that it will print outside the margins and do I want to go ahead. I say yes and it prints fine, except it always then prints a second blank page. This doesn't happen if I print to you laser printer but we need the sticky labels to attach to the boxes.

This worked perfectly with the exact same set up in Windows XP (same printer, same version of Word), so it has to be something related to Windows 7. I have tried resetting the margins, messing around with the printer preferences, nothing seems to work, so any help would be appreciated!

BTW this WAS also happening with our Samsung laser printer (printing an extra page, it used to say EOJ on the top of the one extra page) with EVERYTHING we printed but reinstalling new drivers from Sansung fixed that problem, we have tried that with Zebra and it didn't help. Many thanks!

Thanks for your reply, I was able to get rid of the error message using your suggestions but still a 2nd page prints out of the UPS label printer each time we print an address label which only takes up about 1/2 the page.

We removed the 'headers and footers"s it stopped printing "shipping labels.txt" at the top and Page 1 in the middle of the 2nd page, but still insists on printing a 2nd page each time

Any other ideas are welcome! The ONLY change in the way we used to do and it now is the change to the new computer with Windows 7, still running the same version of Word 2003 from Office, thanks!!

Anak said:

Have you visited this site?
Deleting “Blank” Pages

“Blank” pages that aren’t really blank

Except for the blank even or odd pages that Word inserts as needed before an Odd or Even Page break (see “True blank pages”), most “blank” pages aren’t really blank. If a page “prints,” it’s because there is something on it.

I used to run into this in my younger days.

It would turn out that I had a period (.) or some other infinitesimal item on the page that was not readily obvious.

And like it says in the link,

A simple test will help you decide: Can you see the page? That is, in Print Layout view or Print Preview, does Word display the empty page? If so, it is not really “blank.”

I used to have a bad habit, where I would "Return" down to another page just so I had more room to see what I was typing.



This may not apply in your case because you are using the same printers, but the new OS (7) may be picking up a setting that never bothered your previous OS.

Blank pages not caused by Word at all

If you are getting a blank page at the end of every document you print and have exhausted all other explanations, check the printer Properties to see whether there is a “separator page” option that has been enabled.

Source, same as above.

Building on what Anak has just said, why don't you use your ¶Show/Hide icon to be able to display exactly what hidden formatting symbols are making your printer print an extra page. Then, just delete them.

Thanks for all the advice, we messed around with a lot of different setting and finally figured out that we need to set the printer to "user defined" for the paper feed and make sure it was on manual and the correct paper size. So now it is only printing one page. The only weird thing now is that anytime we try to print to this printer (ups label or address label) the first time you try to do it, if the printer was already on, it just gives an error message and then won't print. If you turn it off and then on again it works just fine....quirky little thing but at least we have mastered it now rather than the other way around! Thanks again for all your help!