Expert: Amy - 2/16/2005

Question
Hi Amy!

I am on Illustrator 10 with a Mac v.10.3.3. I've worked with Illustrator in a silkscreen printing job for 5 years, fairly confident in my above average knowledge of the program, but I am quite puzzled about a recent problem that popped up.

Someone used the program when I was out and I came back to find no windows open for swatches, type, etc. I couldn't get the swatches to work and found you to be very helpful in getting the library to show up again in Window/Swatch Libraries. (It turned out to be one or more corrupted fonts! I took a whole bunch off and started adding them back one by one...voila!) I had also removed the aiprefs file... which perhaps led to the problem that I can't seem to get past.

When I make a new file, the artboard comes up to letter size (landscape), but the page tiling area that shows in the dotted inner area aligns itself in the upper right corner with the dotted area being 9.3 x 7.4 - no margins on the right and top, and a big one on the left and bottom.

I have tried various settings in Document setup and Page setup, have tried using both printers (Epson and Xante) and "any printer" in the page setup with no changed results.

What controls the page tiling lines, and how do I make the margins the same on all sides?

Thanks!
Renata

Answer
Hi Renata,

Page tiling is controlled by the printer and paper size you've got selected in Document and Print Setup. It is also influenced by the printer's settings.

Since you are selecting different printers in print setup and NOTHING's changing, something's royally screwed up.

Quit Ai, toss the prefs file again, and restart Ai. Doing this simply reverts you to factory defaults and should never cause a problem like you've described. I throw mine away daily.

Then if nothing changes, make sure you've:
Selected Single Full Page in Document Setup.
Selected Letter Sized paper.
(Sounds like you've done these two things.)

And whichever printer you're using, go to its Printer Properties (click on Properties from Print Setup) and make sure some weird settings aren't selected like "minimize margins" or something.

Another thing to try... the Page Tool (shares the same palette location as the Hand Tool in Tools) moves the printable area around on the artboard. Use it to drag that wrong-sized box to the center of your artboard if worse comes to worst.

I hope something in here leads you to the answer!
Amy