How to print A3 on A4
Scaling down documents onto different sized paper has often been tricky.
It’s good to have flexibility when it comes to your printing options. One document needs to print in colour, another needs to print monochrome and another needs to print on a particular type or size of paper.
So, what can you do if you have an A3 document that needs to be printed in A4? Scaling documents to print at the correct size has been a little tricky in the past, resulting in wasted printing resources.
As printing a document to a different size specification has been the bane of many an office worker and slowed down plenty of printing jobs, we’re asking: is there an easy way to scale documents to print A3 size on A4 paper?
The short answer
The good news is that, yes, there is now an easy way to print from A3 to A4. Many of the latest professional printers will, in most cases, automatically reduce and scale your documents for you. Whereas before you may have had to fiddle around with manually resizing your document within Word, PowerPoint or a similar application – which can prove tricky – you can now scale your documents at the point of printing.
Scaling documents for print
For the most part, modern printers can automatically scale your printed documents as you require. Where this isn’t possible to be done automatically, there are still options for you to easily print A3 size on A4 paper.
Before you send your documents to print, simply select the paper size you want to print to within the menu. If you’re scaling down a document from A3 to A4 printing, select the ‘shrink oversized pages’ tick box before you click ‘print’, as it’s this that instructs the printer to bring the content down to your selected size of paper, regardless of how big the original file is. Then you’re all good to go.
Scanning and copying
Things are just as simple when it comes to scanning and printing. For physical A3 documents that need to be printed on A4, you’ll have reduction options available with your professional Brother printer. If you’re using a printer with an A3 scanner or Automatic Document Feeder, you’ll have the option to scale your documents down to A4.
Simply load your A3 physical document into your printer and select how many copies you would like to print. Before going on to copying and printing your document, use your printer’s touch screen to select ‘options’ and then select ‘enlarge/reduce’. From there, choose ‘reduce’ and you’ll be able to select the reduction ratio that you desire for your print job. In this case, you’ll be scanning from A3 to print on A4 paper.
It’s that simple. If you have an A3 document that needs to be reproduced at a smaller size, simple scan or copy it with a Brother all-in-one printer.
What about scaling up?
There are many reasons you may need to scale A3 documents to print in A4. But conversely, you may need to scale a document up. Fortunately, the latest printing software allows you to scale documents both up and down in size, by following exactly the same steps we’ve outlined above no matter which direction you need to move in.
Automatically scaling your documents is just one way our latest range of professional printers help to make life easy. Always ‘At your side’; use our product advisor tool to help find your perfect printer.