MS Access 2013 runtime report page size

Report rendering is highly dependent on the printer and/or driver being used.

 Unless you have exactly the same printer and driver setup, you may see minor differences in output.

 So the first question is, does the current printer/driver being used support the A4 page size?

Jim.

Thanks for the input Jim.
I am using the output command with pdf format.
The application is running on a virtaul web server and there are no actual printers connected. The default printer is Microsoft XPS Document Writer

So your using the Office PDF plugin?

On your full version, if you rename the DB .accdr and execute (or use the /runtime switch), do you get the same result?

Jim.

I have not explicitly setup the Office PDF plugin, (nor any other pdf product) but I presume that as Access is part of the office suite then the default pdf facilities would be the office plugin.

Changed my db to accdr on my development machine and do NOT get the same symptom. The output is sized to A4.

My take on this:

a report which uses every millimeter of an A4 page

So this seems to be the basic issue.

In my experience, reports that stretch the limits of the paper they are printed on, ....perhaps need to have thier designs rethought...

A4 is taller and narrower than Letter sized paper.
So my guess is that the Taller A4 margin is the issue.

Many printers manufactured in the US "claim" to support A4, but many only do so by presuming that the margins you set will be large enough to accomodate either format.
(My guess is that the same will be true for Printers manufactured for "A" sized paper.)
As an example
... on a standard letter page, ...the smallest printer margin I have ever been able to set is .17 inches (4.32mm)
(Again, ...my guess is that the same will be true for Printers manufactured for "A" sized paper.)
...so the maximum printable area of a letter sized paper will be about:
Height
11.5-(.17 *2)
11.5-.34
11.16 or 283.464 mm

Moving these calculations to A4 sized paper we get:
Height:
11.7-.34
11.36 or 288.544 mm

So here we see that a report printed all the way out to 288.544mm (11.36 inches), will be truncated at 11.16 (283.464 mm) in on letter sized paper.

Workaround:
Reduce the vertical size of the report so that it fits inside the 11.16 inch  (283.464 mm), absolute margin limits of letter sized paper.
To keep this simple,
...Any report 200mm (7.9 inches) max width, ...and 267mm (10.5 inches) max height, ...will fit on either paper size.

There is no facility to "shrink to fit" using the Access built in PDF functionality
The issue here seems to be the size of the report, not the PDF output. (if I am reading this thread correctly)
The PDF is simply a graphical representation (as saved version) of the printers output codes, ....in other words, ...printing a the report or printing the PDF will result in the exact same output.

Again if a Report:

uses every millimeter of an A4 page

...you may wish to consider redesigning the report to not be so "confined"
(reduce what is displayed, reduce the font size, only display summary info (no details), insert a page break, ...etc)
...or simply move up to the next paper size...

JeffCoachman

Thanks Jeff for your input.

The report is a scoresheet for volleyball, and the standard scoresheet in a non computing environment is an A3 size (double A4 size). It was quite an achievement to make it work on A4 and still be readable/usable.
Further reduction is not relevant.
It could possibly be reshaped to suit Letter, but then different format would be necessary depending where the final printout will occur. Nobody has Letter paper in this part of the world.
As for move up a size - that would mean every potential user has to buy differnt/bigger printers.

Surely the solution I should be seeking is to find that setting or tweak to have technology perform as stated. I am sure the solution to this is trivial, for the person who knows.

Further reduction is not relevant.
It could possibly be reshaped to suit Letter,

These two statements are conflicting...
...as you cant really "reshape" the A4 doc to fit letter paper without reducing the height.

Is it possible for you to post a screenshot of the full report in a4 size?

Perhaps Jim or I can provide some suggestions...

Here is an example, but I still feel we should be looking to find how to be able to use A4 size paper, not be forced into using Letter
2015R25.pdf

Because it worked!