Home > Technical Support > My Printout Looks Squished or Skips Pages

• Make sure you're printing to the correct printer. Often you may have more than one printer driver installed on your computer. If you use one printer all the time, you should make it the default printer. (Windows will always use the default printer unless otherwise specified.)

  To set the default printer in Windows 95/98:

  1. Click the Start button, select Settings, then Printers.

  2. Click once on the icon for your printer to select it.

  3. From the File menu, select Set as Default. If it's checked, then the default is set correctly; if it's not, make your printer the default by selecting it from the menu.

  Note: You can also choose a printer from within Family Tree Detective. Select the File menu, then Print. Then select Setup button. You can use the default, or you can use a different printer by choosing it from the Specific Printer list.

• Make sure you have your printer set to the correct paper size.
  1. Click the Start button, select Settings, then Printers.

  2. Click once on the icon for your printer to select it.

  3. From the File menu, select Properties.

  4. Click the Paper tab and make sure it's set to the correct paper (or form) size.
     
     

  Note: The steps will vary depending on the printer you're using. For example, on some printers you access the paper size by clicking the Setup button in the Details tab of the Printer Properties dialog box.

• Make sure you've installed the correct printer driver. (The printer driver is the piece of software that manages the communication between your operating system, such as Windows, and the printer itself.) Check your printer documentation for a list of compatible drivers. Manufacturers usually ship their printers with drivers for the most common operating systems, and some are packaged with the operating systems themselves. Most manufacturers update their drivers fairly frequently and post them to their Web sites. If you don't have Internet access, call the manufacturer and see if they can send you their most recent driver on disk.

• If you're still having problems, reinstall your current printer driver.