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Zebra Printer Margin Troubleshooting

Cory M. Updated by Cory M.

Zebra (and other thermal printers) are a little unlike normal laser printers in the way they handle paper sizes since the paper size is set in the driver and cannot always be selected on the fly. If you are experiencing issues with your print being cut off, shrunk, rotated or otherwise misaligned, you likely need to either Calibrate the printer or add a Custom Stock. If that fails, the issues with media size may be fixed by loading the factory defaults and then calibrating the media and finally adding a custom stock.

For all of the troubleshooting steps, the first step is to "Locate Printing Preferences" which is described below.

Locate Printing Preferences

  1. In the search bar, enter Printers & Scanners, and hit Enter, or click the result showing Printers & Scanners to show your printers.
  1. Locate and click your printer from the list.
  2. Click Manage among the buttons that appear.
  3. Click Printing preferences.

Load Factory Defaults

If the Zebra Printer is not printing the label in the correct orientation, appears cut-off or off-center, then there may be settings in the driver software preventing your label from printing correctly. To make sure there are no other settings affecting your print, you can try to Load Factory Defaults.

  1. Open the Printing Preferences for the Zebra printer.
  2. Click the Tools tab.
  3. With Action selected as the "Command type", select Load factory defaults from the list of "Command names" and click Send.
This will remove any custom settings for the Zebra printer that were added.
  1. Re-print your label. You should see your label printed at the correct size and fully visible. If not, or the label is still getting cut off, proceed to the next troubleshooting method.

Add a Custom Stock

In some cases you may need to specify the exact (or longer) label size that you are printing to line up the print on the paper. To do this you can create a custom "Stock".

  1. Open the Printing Preferences for the Zebra printer.
  2. Click the Stocks tab.
  3. Create a new stock type by clicking "New..." and give it a short name that describes the size.
  1. Adjust the Label Dimensions to match the label paper size you are using. (example: Label Width: 4.00, Label Height: 6.00)
  1. Click OK to close the Stock window, then Apply on the main Preferences window.
  2. Return to the Options tab, and select your custom Stock in the "Stocks" dropdown menu.
  3. Click Apply then retry your print job.

Calibrate Media

If the print appears slightly misaligned, then the Calibration tool should correct any media feed offset.

  1. Open the Printing Preferences for the Zebra printer.
  2. Navigate to the Tools tab.
  3. Select Calibrate media in the list of commands.
  4. Click Send.
This will initiate a print of 2 to 3 blank labels as it defines the label edges.

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