Expert: Tom Rouze - 4/4/2006

Question
Tom: I am not well versed in Illustrator, but have a new problem.  When I open anything in Illustrator, imported or new, there is this little square box in the middle of the page which turns out to be the print area and I cannot delete it.  The file I import will supercede the edges of this box, but nothing outside of it will print. What is this thing?

Answer
Hi Carl,

If you're talking about the dotted line area then you are correct it is the print area. It will not print but if you want to just not see it (because it's kind of annoying) then you can go to View> hide page tiling and that will hide the print area box.
This may be the reason why you see a small box in the middle of the page.  The print area is usually set as a default of 8.5" x 11".  If when you open a file and it is much larger than the 8.5 x 11 size the print area will not adjust to that size unless you have a printer that can print that size.
Another thing you can try is to go to File> Document Setup then make your Art Board larger by either entering the size yourself or selecting a larger size from the pull down menu.

If you still have a problem let me know and I'll ask a few questions so we can figure this out but this should do the trick.
Hope this helped!

Thank you,

Tom