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In our office we need to print credit card reports before the closing of the day. All reports come from IE 9 on our Windows 7 machine, but this dumb web site that generates them (Authorize.net) doesn't have an option to render a page "for print", so when we print them the right side of the page gets cut off -- right where the amounts are :)

There's a workaround to go into the print settings in IE and change it to landscape, but the setting is reset to portrait the next time we open IE.

So my question is, how to make IE print that page in landscape by default? (Most of our office personnel aren't very computer savvy to bring up a print settings dialog before printing. Plus it will really save time even for people who know how to change it.)

EDIT: I'm talking about these settings: enter image description here

I also found this page that allows to change margins, etc. but not the orientation :(

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Default printing preferences are controlled by the printer driver, not the application. Application can preset its own but IE just doesn't. So there's no universal solution. It might exist for a specific printer though.

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  • I updated my question. As to what you said, how come I was able to do it in Firefox?
    – ahmd1
    Feb 26, 2013 at 22:38
  • @ahmd1: My printers seem to behave just as Alex states. If I go to Start Menu / Devices and Printers, right-click the printers, go to Printing preferences and set the Layout to Portrait or Landscape, every app obeys that default setting unless overridden while printing. (Additionally, if you have control over the HTML generated, this may help.)
    – Karan
    Feb 27, 2013 at 5:15
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It's a fairly drastic solution but if you are desperate...

You could install IE7pro for everyone.

One of the features is that it will run "Userscripts". You would then need to create a userscript that overrode the print CSS for the page(s) in question.

To force landscape printing in CSS for IE, here are a couple of pointers:

As an alternative, it is possible to override the CSS of a page using a bookmarklet. Bookmarklets are JavaScript code stored in a bookmark and this can be used to apply specific CSS overrides as you could do with UserScripts.

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  • Thanks. I have IE 9, would it work with IE7Pro? I also need it to work with the Group Policy configuration.
    – ahmd1
    Feb 26, 2013 at 23:02
  • Sorry, forgot to include the link. AFAIK, it does work on IE9, I've certainly used it on IE8. Just going to try it on IE10 ;)
    – Julian Knight
    Feb 26, 2013 at 23:03
  • Hmm, it does seem to work fine. Unfortunately, they also seem to be trying a little too hard to monitize it. Takes a bit more tweaking to get rid of the less useful bits now than it used to but otherwise still seems OK.
    – Julian Knight
    Feb 26, 2013 at 23:15
  • Yeah, I checked it and I don't think I want to use it. The download link points to a downloader executable that screams "malware" or at least "ton of crapware" for me. So sorry, there's no way I'm installing it...
    – ahmd1
    Feb 26, 2013 at 23:23
  • I can't blame you. It sent me to Brothersoft which isn't a pleasant experience. Though, in truth you can avoid their adware. Try looking to another plugin that will allow UserScripts to be run. I'm not an IE fan so I don't use it much.
    – Julian Knight
    Feb 26, 2013 at 23:26

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