Borderless PDF Printing on a Mac

I’m a stickler for perfection and I oftentimes create documents in Microsoft Word or Powerpoint that need to be borderless when exported to PDF format. I’m sure you’ve seen a beautiful document magically sport an unwanted white border around the page, much like this.

Borderless Printing

On a Mac, using File -> Save As… -> Format (PDF) will not work as you’ll get the white borders.

Borderless Printing

 

A solution that was floated online was to create a custom Paper Size and setting the Non-Printable Area margins to 0. However, this will cause problems when you have a document that has multiple sections (Microsoft Word). You’ll suddenly have multiple PDF files that will have a suffix – filename.2.pdf, filename.3.pdf and this will be a huge nightmare for you.

The solution is pretty simple, really

1. Download generic Gutenprint Mac printer drivers fromĀ gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php

2. Doubleclick on the downloaded .dmg file. Double click on the installation file and complete the process.

3. Go to the System Preferences on your Mac and click Printers & Scanners.

4. Click on the + sign as shown below.

Borderless Printing

5. Select the IP tab and in the Address field, key in 123.

6. Select Internet Printing Protocol – IPP.

7. Under the Use section below, choose Select Software…

Borderless Printing

8. A long list of printers will appear based on the Gutenprint drivers you just installed. In the search section, key in C83.

9. Select Epson Stylus C83. This is a printer that has borderless capabilities. Click OK.

Borderless Printing

10. Give the printer an easy-to-identify name like Borderless PDF. Click Add.

Borderless Printing

11. An error will pop-up because the printer doesn’t physically exist on your computer. Just click Continue.

Borderless Printing

12. That’s it. Go to Microsoft Word and when you want to print, look for the printer you just installed and select it.

13. Then click on the PDF button below and choose Save as PDF.

14. Leave me a comment if this worked for you!

Borderless Printing

9 Comments

  1. An Internetter - August 8, 2014

    Works like a charm. Thanks a great deal.

  2. ID - August 26, 2014

    It worked! I was nervous about installing an unknown program… but this did the trick. I wasn’t interested in printing, just saving a word document into a pdf without that white border. Thank you for the write up!!

  3. binks - September 3, 2014

    Amazing, but it does WORK!
    Why OSX forces on us this silly silly white border in PDFs at first place? What’s the purpose? What good does it make? NONSENSE!!!!

    Thanks mate for the perfect solution! ;-)

  4. Brian - October 5, 2014

    Absolutely a huge help. Like it was said in the article – changing margins is a ridiculous idea and has to be done for each individual document. Thank you so very much for this solution.

  5. Kiri - October 6, 2014

    works like a dream and isn’t a virus! thanks so much!!!

  6. Nicole - October 20, 2014

    Thank you! When uploading a thesis, there are very specific formatting options. I have been worried about how I was going to deal with this issue and searching for solutions. I found this blog and had a friend of mine who works with computers review the Gutenprint driver files. He said they were all clean. It totally worked. Thank you.

  7. Tony - October 22, 2014

    I’d been desperate enough to try this solution on Aperture and I have to say, it works! Thanks!

  8. Isa - October 22, 2014

    Hi! thank you but for me is not working :( just the last step when i click save as pdf, using that printer it saves with the margings that are driving me crazy :(!
    thanks anyways!
    Isabel

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