Printing guide
How to print at actual size
"Actual size" means the printer reproduces the document at 100% scale — a 100 mm rectangle in the file is 100 mm on the paper. It is essential for label sheets, business cards, rulers and any template where dimensions matter. The single biggest cause of misaligned print jobs is the opposite setting: "Fit to page".
Setting it is the easy half. The hard half is knowing it worked — printers apply their own margins, and a page can come out 2% small with nothing on screen to show it. If you have already printed something and want to be certain, print one calibration sheet and measure the line on it: it tells you the exact percentage your printer applied, once, and then you know it for every job after.
The Fit-to-page trap
By default, most print dialogs select "Fit to printable area" or "Scale to fit" — sometimes quietly, without telling you. The intent is friendly: if your PDF is slightly larger than the paper, the printer scales it down to fit, so nothing gets cut. For everyday documents this is fine. For templates, it is a disaster.
A US Letter PDF printed onto A4 paper with "Fit to page" enabled is scaled to about 97% — small enough that the result looks fine to a casual eye, big enough that labels miss their die cuts and a printed ruler reads short.
Where to find the setting
The exact wording varies by application, but the location is consistent: it is in the print dialog, near the top, sometimes labelled "Scale", "Page Sizing", "Print Size" or just "Scaling".
Adobe Acrobat / Acrobat Reader
File → Print → under Page Sizing & Handling choose Actual size (not "Fit" or "Shrink oversized pages"). This is the most reliable way to print any PDF at scale.
Chrome & Edge
Ctrl/Cmd+P → More settings → set Scale to Default or choose Custom and type 100. Avoid "Fit to printable area" — Chrome applies it silently to oversized PDFs.
Edge’s built-in PDF viewer is now powered by Adobe and has its own scaling control, separate from the browser print dialog. When the file is a PDF, look for Page Sizing rather than Scale — setting one and not the other is why a page can still come out small after you have checked the obvious box.
Firefox
Ctrl/Cmd+P → Scale → untick "Fit to page width" and select 100% (or type it). Firefox remembers the last value, so check it each time.
Safari & macOS Preview
Cmd+P → set Scale to 100%. In Preview, additionally make sure "Scale to Fit" is unticked in the print sheet’s options.
Windows Photos / Paint
In the print dialog choose Full page photo and untick Fit picture to frame — that toggle both crops and rescales. For anything dimension-critical, prefer printing the PDF version instead of an image.
Microsoft Word
File → Print → at the bottom of the settings column, set 1 Page Per Sheet and make sure Scale to paper size reads No Scaling. Word hides this one: it sits inside the same dropdown as the pages-per-sheet option, so it is easy to leave on a previous paper size and never notice.
Microsoft Excel
File → Print → under Settings set the last dropdown to No Scaling. Excel defaults to fitting a sheet onto one page, which is the right behaviour for a report and the wrong one for anything measured. Page Layout → Scale to Fit → set Width and Height to Automatic and Scale to 100%.
Microsoft Publisher
File → Print → set One page per sheet, then check that the paper size in the dialog matches the publication size. Publisher scales to the printer's paper when the two differ, so a card designed at 85 × 55 mm printed onto A4 comes out enlarged unless the sizes agree.
If you cannot find the option, search the application's help for "scale to fit" — it is almost always the keyword used.
Your printer driver calls it something else again
There are two scaling controls in every print job, not one: the application's, and the printer driver's behind the Properties or Preferencesbutton. Setting the first to 100% does nothing if the second is still fitting to the page, and this is the usual reason a print comes out small when every visible setting looks right. The wording differs by brand: Canon drivers offer a page-layout choice where Normal-size is the one you want and Fit-to-Page is not; Epson calls the section Reduce/Enlarge and wants it set to Off or Actual; HP offers size options where Actual size sits beside Scale to fit; Brother has a Scaling control that must read Off rather than Fit to Paper Size. Names vary between models and driver versions, so the reliable instruction is the shape rather than the label: open Properties, find whichever control mentions fitting, scaling or paper size, and set it to the option that does nothing.
Printing from an iPhone, iPad or Android phone
On a phone there is usually no Actual size setting to find. Neither system has a scaling control of its own: Apple describes the print options as the printer, one- or two-sided printing and a page range, and Android's print framework carries paper size, margins, resolution and colour. Whether a PDF comes out at 100% is left to the printer and its print service, and some fit the page to the paper instead — iPhone users have reported exactly that since iOS 17, with nothing in the print sheet to change it.
So measure rather than trust. The printable ruler, the calibration test, the printer test page, the ring sizer and the protractor each print a check line, square or box of stated size. If it comes out short, open the PDF in your printer maker's own app, which may offer a size or scaling option, or send the file to a computer and print it at Actual size as described above.
A tiled poster is more forgiving than it looks: every page shrinks by the same amount, so the overlaps and alignment marks still meet and the finished poster simply comes out a few percent smaller.
Verifying with a ruler
The reliable test is to print a sheet from a known-size template and overlay a real ruler against it. The printable ruler generator is built for exactly this: it produces a rule at true scale with a check line of stated length printed alongside it. If the 100 mm mark on the print matches 100 mm on a real ruler, scaling is correct. If it is short by 2 mm, the print is at ~98% — scaling is still on somewhere.
Print the ruler once when setting up a new printer or driver, and again after any driver update. It takes one sheet and rules out the most common cause of a print coming out the wrong size.
For a proper measurement rather than a spot check, the print scale calibration test prints a 100 mm square with two independent line references: type in what you measured and it returns the exact percentage your printer produced, plus the corrective scale to reprint at.
The stakes rise with scale rulers and scaled drawings: a life-size ruler printed 3% small is obvious against a real one, but a 1:100 ruler with the same error looks normal and understates every distance by 3%.
When scaling is fine
For casual documents (essays, reports, articles, photos) "Fit to page" is harmless and often helpful. For anything that will be cut, aligned with pre-cut sheets, used for measurement, or stuck to a real-world object, always disable scaling and verify with a ruler before printing in bulk.
Frequently asked questions
What does "actual size" mean?
The document is printed at 100% scale: a 100 mm wide rectangle in the file is exactly 100 mm wide on the paper. The opposite is "Fit to page" or "Scale to fit", which adjusts the document up or down to fill the printable area — useful for casual printing, ruinous for templates.
Why does scaling cause problems?
Templates designed at exact dimensions (label sheets, business cards, rulers, graph paper) rely on the printed output matching those dimensions. Even a 2% scale change makes labels misaligned with pre-cut sheets, makes a printed ruler measure wrong, and shifts business cards off their cut lines.
Can I print at actual size from an iPhone or Android phone?
Usually not by choice: neither iOS nor Android has a scaling setting in its print options, so the printer or its print service decides, and some fit the page to the paper. Print a sheet with a check line or square of known size, such as the printable ruler or the calibration test, and measure it. If it is short, print from the printer maker’s app or from a computer at Actual size.
Where is the setting in major print dialogs?
Look for "Scale" or "Page Sizing" in the print dialog. The exact wording varies — common options are "Actual size", "100%", "None" or "Off". If you see "Fit to printable area" enabled by default, turn it off. The setting usually sits near the top of the dialog, sometimes inside an "Advanced" section.
How can I verify the print is actually at the right size?
Use a printed ruler. Print a sheet from the rulers tool here, then hold a real ruler against it. If the printed ruler's 100 mm mark sits exactly on a real 100 mm mark, scaling is correct. If it is off, adjust the print dialog and try again.
Why does Chrome print my PDF slightly smaller than 100%?
Chrome silently applies "Fit to printable area" when a PDF's page size exceeds the printable region — even by a millimetre. Set Scale to 100 explicitly under More settings, or print the file from Acrobat with "Actual size", which never auto-shrinks without telling you.
Does borderless printing affect actual size?
It can. Many drivers implement borderless mode by slightly enlarging the page (1–3%) so ink reaches the edges. For templates and rulers, switch borderless off and accept the unprintable margin — dimensional accuracy and edge-to-edge ink rarely coexist on home printers.
My printer keeps adding a tiny margin — is that scaling?
Not necessarily. Most home printers physically cannot print to the very edge of the paper — they have a 3–5 mm unprintable margin. That is hardware, not scaling. If your document fits inside the printable area, "Actual size" still produces correct dimensions; the margin just happens around it.
Can I make actual size the default so I do not have to set it every time?
Partly, and it depends where the setting lives. Application-level scaling in Chrome and Edge is not remembered between sessions — the print preview resets to Default each time, and there is no setting or flag that changes this. Firefox does remember the last scale you used, which cuts both ways: it will also remember a wrong one. What you can make permanent is the printer driver setting, and that is the more useful half anyway: open Control Panel → Devices and Printers on Windows, right-click the printer, choose Printing Preferences, and set the scaling control there to off or none. That becomes the starting point for every job on that printer. The application can still override it per print, so a measured job is still worth a glance at the preview.
Why does my printer only let me print full page and not actual size?
The option is usually there but greyed out, and the reason is almost always a paper mismatch. If the document is A4 and the tray is set to Letter, or the other way round, most drivers disable true scale rather than let you print something that would be clipped — so the control you want is switched off by a setting two dialogs away. Set the paper size in the printer driver to match the document, and the actual size option becomes selectable again.
Does Windows 11 have a setting to force actual size when printing?
Not as a system-wide switch, no. Windows has no global print-scaling control; each application carries its own, and the printer driver carries another beneath them. The closest thing to forcing it is setting the driver default in Printing Preferences, which applies to every job sent to that printer unless an application overrides it. If prints keep coming out small despite that, the override is happening in the application — check the scaling control there before assuming Windows is at fault.
Printing something specific?
The setting above is the same whatever you are printing, but the rest of the job usually is not. These handle the part the print dialog cannot.
If it still is not right
Three problems account for nearly every case where the setting above does not solve it, and each has its own guide.
Not sure which option to pick
What Fit to printable area actually does, and where the 3–6% shrink comes from.
It keeps switching back on
Scaling lives at three layers. Setting the wrong one is why the fix does not stick.
Now the edges are missing
Four causes, told apart by which part of the page went missing.