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Project too large to print - Any ideas? RRS feed

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    Hi, I have created a construction programme with 769 tasks running from now until December 2017.  I want to print this off A3 and apprecite this will be on many pages although each time I try I get a message telling me:

    "The current project is too large to fit on the specified number of pages.  Project has set the printer scaling to 10 percent and will print your project at 10 perecnt of normal size"

    There is no way I can see of adjusting pages from the print menu as this message appears before I can do anything else.

    Can anyone help please?

    Monday, October 20, 2014 9:57 AM

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    Hi,

    Which Project version are you using? I've just run a test (using Project Pro 2013 with latest SP/CU) and created a project with more the 900 tasks and I was able to print as PDF my project plan (ended up with 756 A3 pages). Also, maybe you have a setting in place to fit the printed version on a number of pages in place?

    Paul

    Monday, October 20, 2014 10:50 AM
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    Silverback94,

    A suggestion. If you really need to print out the full schedule for that size project and it will take 700+ pages of A3 as Paul suggests, you will save time and frustration by finding a plotter, or someone who has a plotter you can use.

    As an alternate, print out only the near term tasks, say a 3 or 6 month look-ahead window. Then do a rolling printout every month or so.

    John

    Monday, October 20, 2014 3:15 PM
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    Instead of printing to your default "real" printer which only supports paper size up to A3, try printing to a PDF writer such as PDF995 (a "virtual" printer) which supports large format page sizes such as ISO A0.

    Then try print preview. If the default page size is A4 or "letter" your project will get shrunk to 10%. Then you can use the page setup link to specify a larger paper size. Go straight to A0, then work down to A3.You probably have a combination of too many wide columns and a zoomed up Gantt chart.

    Tuesday, October 21, 2014 6:13 AM
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    I have similar issue (project too big, so it scaled down to 10%). 

    Not sure if it is related, but random rows (task lines) are scaled to (estimated) 20 times larger than the text font size. In other words, while editing in Gantt Chart: all task font is Arial Narrow 11 pt, and fits "normally" within the lines above and below the task. Reiterating, this is while editing in the Gantt Chart view.

    When I attempt to print the file to PDF, all of the text fonts REMAIN 11 pt height, but some - not all - vertical spaces are approximately 20 times too large for the row (individual task line). Clarifying - the text is still 11 pt, but the vertical space for the single row is approximately 20 times too large. This random extra large space appears in the print preview and in the PDF file, as well.

    Any one come across this and if so, what did you do to fix it?

    Toddster01

    Friday, May 6, 2016 8:24 PM
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    How about a screenshot of what it looks like on the screen in the Gantt chart view, and one of what it looks like in print preview?

    I will assume that in the Gantt chart view all of your task rows are one row high and there is no text wrapping in the cells, mainly in the task name cells.

    However, if that is not the case and you have some thin rows and some fat rows, and there is text wrapping, then do this to male it so. view, outline, all subtasks. select the top left square above the ID column. This selects all tasks. locate one of the fat rows and in the ID column click and grab the bottom boundary of the row and drag it up until it is a bit narrower than one row of text. This will force all rows to be one row high/thick. That fixes it for now but does not prevent it from happening again. To change this, view, tables, more tables and click edit to edit the current table (probably the entry table). Change the text wrapping attribute of the Task Name field to no. Yes is the default design of the table but I don't like it so I always change it to no.

    Now, back to my assumption, have you used the page setup link to set page size/orientation, scaling, header, footer, legend etc? The link is on the print preview. To make things print properly, you have to know this like the back of your hand.

    Try starting with scaling = 100% and print to your PDF writer and a large sheet, say A0.

    If it looks like there is plenty of space for it on the large sheet, bring the sheet size down and perhaps adjust the scale.

    Your problem sounds to me as if you have the scaling set to X pages tall and wide even though your tasks and rows and bars would fit on fewer pages, and MSP is expanding to fill the available space.

    Friday, May 6, 2016 11:56 PM
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    Only 800 tasks shouldn't cause that much of an issue - what is your timescale set to?  I assume you want to see the Gantt bars (hence question about timescales) - so could you change the timescale elements to show for instance two levels of Quarter (set to Q1 2016) and then month?  If this still doesn't fit on a suitable number of pages you could look at changing the 100% zoom to something like 75%?

    If you have a lot of columns that people may want to look at alongside the Gantt you could print off a separate Task Sheet based view with no Gantt bars to contain the information and then have a simple ID, Name, Start, Finish Gantt alongside it for the 'picture' element.

    HTH

    Miles 

    Tuesday, May 17, 2016 11:38 AM