Matrix printer keeps rotating my paper from Microsoft Word!

Hello Tiele,

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Community.

To resolve this issue we need some information. Let us know the following.

1. How does it look in the Print Preview? Check in Print Preview and see if the document shows in Portrait mode or Landscape mode.
2. If it shows correctly - in Portrait Mode in Print Preview mode - then Word is doing its job, and the issue lies with the Printer. Check if there is a physical button or settings on the printer itself which helps you change it to Portrait mode.

Check the above and let us know the result.

Thank you.

No, it's not shown correctly in print preview.

Let me explain with 3 printscreens.

My interface is in dutch.. sorry about that.

First two screens are clearly showing the page format in portrait while a the selected format is 21x14, NOT 14x21. The page orientation was automatically set to portrait. When changed to landscape, the page will be shown as 21x14 but then it's printed out all wrong. That makes sense too...

It's one of these things like 'it's not a bug, it's a feature'. For dummies that swap their page size numbers.

In excel, the page orientation below is also in portrait by the way.

Seems to me that the page size selected is 14cm wide by 21cm high rather what you expect.

If the page size was 21 cm wide by 14 cm high, I would expect it to look like the following screen captures in Print Layout and Print Preview respectively.

Try using the "5.5  90°"  -  the next one in the list of paper sizes in your first screen shot.

I've added the 5.5 90° for testing but it performs exactly the same in Word. Dimensions are printed as WIDTH x HEIGHT. Check other dimensions. A4 i.e. is printed as "21 cm x 29,7 cm". Letter is printed as "21,95 cm x 27,94 cm".

In your screenshot above, have you been able to set-up your page dimension like that without selecting landscape?

Notice the difference with Word & Excel in my screens? Both have selected the same page format but Word is rotating my page because it thinks that a portrait page is longer on the left/right side.

I 'understand' why Word is acting this way. This is indeed the difference between portrait and landscape. But on a printer that doesn't support orientation detection, it makes it impossible to print!

In modern copiers you can put in paper any way you want. The printer will measure the paper dimension and print out as requested. Most drivers even have an extra feature that rotates the page after it's been passed through by the application. A matrix printer and a lot of other printers do not. They print out what they receive and Word is trying to be helpful but it's not. Word should do what it's told. If I say that my paper is 21cm wide and 14cm high in portrait, it should believe me.

What if an Artificial Intelligence robot decides that you temperature should be taken while laying down while you'd prefer it orally?