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merwetta1

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assign custom paper size to printer

I've read many of the xp custom paper size solutions, but seem to be missing a step.

I went into the Printers and Faxes control panel and used Server Properties to create a new form. That went OK.

My problem is that the new form size does not appear as an option in print setup or the printer's printing preferences. How do I assign the new form size to a specific printer?

I'm encountering the same problem with a Panasonic FX880+ and an Epson Stylus Color 900.
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ECNSSMT

I think you may have to go to the printer and adjust the paper tray to that sized paper.  This is under the rational that the printer will "advertise" which size paper it has in what paper tray, thus giving users "real" options.

regards,
and unless I somehow may have misunderstood the question, then it becomes "place the unique paper size in the manual feed tray", because many of the paper trays have sensors that detect what size paper you have (letter, legal, A, 11x17) and provides it as a choice to the PC print drivers. If its a odd envelope size or realyy odd paper size 6x11, its going to have to be configured for the manual feed.

regards,
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ASKER

thanks for the comments. my main goal here is to print tractor feed mailing labels on the Panasonic FX880+. The labels are 3.5" x .94".

after more playing around, I got a custom paper size to appear on the epson stylus color 900. my original test on that printer was a custom paper size to big for the printer, and when I made the form smaller in Server Properties, it started appearing as a paper size option.

so I'm guessing that the printer driver for the FX880+ doesn't think the printer can handle the mailing label size. However, the printer was printing the same labels fine on a previous XP machine which is no longer available to check, so there must be a way.

any advice on a workaround would be appreciated.
big question there is,  was there some sort of really old DOS based app that was used to print these labels with?  Dot matrix and today's computers are not a good mix.  Windows has this funky way of sending to the printer that you get shades of black as opposed to actual dot matrix printing when you use the Windows based drivers.  With that you'd tend to forgo the harsh setup procedures to get the configuration just right on the printer properties.  oddly, I don't even think that the windows based driver programmers even consider support for tractorfeed any more.

If it gets really desperate, you may want to recreate your parameters and maybe employ MS Word; set up a template that mimics the outline of the tractor feed sheets and do a mail or some kind of merge to get your data in a format that would be agreeable with your printing requirements and print from there.  Note however, paper alignment was handled differently, between "ye olden" method and today's method, you may have to periodically check to ensure that everything is still aligned.  Otherwise, it may be advisable to phase out that dot matrix printer in favor of label sheets and a laser printer.

Keep me abreast of this issue, it sounds interesting.

Regards,
A dot matrix printer is required for triplicate forms. The FX880+ is only a couple years old. There is nothing legacy about the situation. No DOS apps or anything like that. I am printing from Filemaker Pro 8.

So if anyone knows how to get the printer to take that paper size, I would love to hear about it.
Perhaps calling the printer a Panasonic 880 instead of an Epson 880 didn't help the issue.

Epson's customer support provided a solution that worked. They had me install the native Windows XP driver for a Epson 850 impact printer. That driver was willing to use the 3"x1" form size I created in Windows' Server Properties.

So I learned that you can make any custom paper size you want, but each printer driver will decide if it can use that size. In the case of this particular printer, I had to replace the printer driver to use tractor feed mailing labels.

LeeTutor, now that there is a solution to this question, you can decide if it gets deleted or PAQ.
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GranMod

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I had very similar problems to this, in the end it was a major driver issue on a new terminal server I installed.

My tip as it worked on the other two terminal severs, I disabled spooler copied C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\..... from a working server which replaced the drivers with working ones and fixed the problem.