Jason: In this lesson,
we're going to talk about print finishing issues.
This includes incorrect page sizes,
incorrect page orientations, issues with stapling,
and issues with hole punching of your finished products.
Now, first we're going to talk about incorrect page sizes.
On some printers, there are multiple print trays,
and in these print trays,
you can have different sizes of paper.
For example, here in the United States,
we use a standard letter size
which measures 8 1/2 by 11 inches.
Alternatively though, if I was in Europe,
they use a standard letter size called A4,
which is slightly larger than that American standard.
Now, because of this, if I'm using A4 paper
inside of a US-standard printer or vice versa,
I'm going to have incorrect paper sizes
for what I'm trying to print,
especially if my computer is set up to print
on a specific type of paper.
For example, my laptop is set up by default
to use US letter-standard paper sizes.
So if I try to print onto my friend's printer
who happens to be living in London,
it's actually going to come out a little bit smaller
because his page is actually bigger
than what mine is set up for.
Alternatively, here in the United States,
we also have paper called legal size paper.
Now, legal size paper is still 8 1/2 inches wide
but it's not 11 inches tall; instead, it's 14 inches tall.
So again, if my operating system is printing something
and it thinks it's printing it out on letter size paper,
it's going to make it large enough to fill 8 1/2 by 11 inches.
But if my printer has legal paper installed in it,
instead, what I'm going to get
is about three inches of blank space
at the bottom of every page.
So it's important to always use the right size paper
for the thing that you're trying to print.
The second issue you might have
is what's known as incorrect page orientation.
Now, the paper size is one thing,
but the orientation or how it's laid out is another thing.
When it comes to orientation,
there are two different types that we have.
These are portrait and landscape.
Now portrait is the first one,
and if we use a standard US letter size piece of paper
of 8 1/2 by 11 inches, this means we're going to print it
so it's 8 1/2 inches wide and 11 inches tall.
This means the content of our printout
is going to be taller than it is wider.
Now, on the other hand,
if we're doing something like a spreadsheet,
we actually want to turn this on its side
and that's when we use something known as landscape mode.
When we print out in landscape mode,
we are going to make it shorter but wider.
This means that we can fit more things
going across the page from left to right
and less going up and down.
Now both of these orientations are valid
for different use cases.
If you're printing out something like a report,
you're going to want to use portrait mode
where you have a lot more content
going up and down the page.
But if you're printing out a presentation or a spreadsheet,
normally you're going to want to do this using landscape mode
so you can get more information going from left to right.
And this matches up more
with what you're used to seeing on your computer screen
when you're working on a spreadsheet
or a slide presentation.
So it's important to understand
which page orientation you're using
when you start typing up your document
and when you're ready to print that document.
Each document is created for either portrait or landscape
from the beginning
when when you start designing that document.
By default, if you're using a word processor,
it will set up your page in portrait mode.
But if you're creating a slide presentation,
it's going to be using landscape by default.
This is an important thing to keep in mind
as you're setting up your documents
and you get ready to print them,
because if you try printing out a presentation
in portrait mode, you're only going to fill up
about the top half of that piece of paper
instead of filling up the entire page,
because that's the ratio it was designed for
was wider instead of taller.
Now, the next finishing issue we have involves stapling.
Now, most of us in our home printers
don't have a stapler built into them,
but if you're working in an office environment,
most of the large multifunction devices
will have additional finishing features like stapling
built into them.
This allows you to print out a document
that's maybe 10 or 15 pages
and tell it that every time you print a copy of that,
you want a staple in the upper-left corner.
Now, these built-in electronic staplers
are a great time saver for us,
especially in a corporate environment
when we need to print out 10 copies of a report
and give it to everybody around the conference table.
But they can jam.
Just like paper jams, we can have staple jams.
Now, staple jams are normally caused
when somebody tries to staple
too many pieces of paper at once.
For example, most of the large multifunction devices
I've used in the past can support stapling
about 50 pages at a time.
If you printed out something that was 75 pages
and you told it to staple it,
it will try to do that, but it may not be successful,
and this can lead to a staple jam.
This happens because that staple,
instead of going through the pages, will actually get bent,
and because it gets bent,
it gets stuck within the stapling mechanism itself.
To solve these staple jams, you're going to need to go in,
remove the staple cartridge, remove the staple that's stuck,
and then replace the staple cartridge back into the machine.
Now, the final issue we have when it comes to finishing
is what's known as hole punching issues.
Similar to stapling, many of these multifunction devices
also have the ability to punch holes
into the pages that you just printed out.
Now, just like a staple jam, hole punching issues can arise
if you try to punch too many holes at the same time.
If you exceed the maximum number of sheets
that can be punched at once, this will cause an issue
where the hole punch can become jammed
and the paper will actually jam
and get stuck in that hole punch,
because the whole punch can't make it all the way through
all of those sheets.
In general, most of the multifunction devices
that have a hole puncher built in
do know what their maximum limit is,
and therefore, they'll break up your larger print jobs
into smaller batches, punch them,
and then combine them back into your finished product.
So even if I print a 500-page book,
it will go and take 10 or 15 pages at a time,
hole punch those, put it to the side, do the next 10 to 15,
hole punch it, combine it with the others,
and keep doing that until all 500 pages have been printed.
This can help prevent the hole puncher from having a jam,
but again, over time, these jams do sometimes occur,
and if they do,
you're going to have to be able to dislodge that jam,
get the paper out of the hole punch,
and then reset the unit in order to continue operations.
All right, remember, when it comes to finishing issues,
there are four main types of finishing issues.
You can have the incorrect paper size,
you can have the incorrect page orientation,
you can have staple jams, or you can have hole punch jams
inside of your multifunction devices.