Printing your Unanet Reports (and Saving as .pdf)

This page includes tips about browser options for improving your printed output.

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Printing Unanet Reports

Browser settings greatly influence the appearance of printed Unanet reports. Since Unanet reports come in many different shape and sizes, here are some printing tips to help you get better looking printed reports.

When printing, the first thing you should do is get just the report, by clicking the Print Friendly link (to the far right of the page). This will remove the top navigation menu as well as the footer from the page.

 

Now that you have just the report on the screen, the following browser specific guidelines will help you print your reports.

Firefox

  1. Print Preview
    Preview how your report will print by clicking File then Print Preview.

  2. Fitting Printed Reports on the Page
    Unanet Reports vary greatly in width and length, so consider these tips to maximize printing space.

    1. Orientation
      If your Unanet report is too wide, select the Landscape option to fit more on the page. Click Page Setup then select the Format & Options tab to see the orientation setting.

    2. Scale
      If your Unanet report is too wide, check the Shrink to fit Page Width check box, to scale it down to fit the page. If the contents have been scaled down too far, you may try adjusting the margins as described below. Click Page Setup then select the Format & Options tab to see the scale setting.

    3. Margins
      Set the margins to 0 if you are primarily interested in getting the report to fit better on the printed page. To print a report for more formal uses such as a presentation, you can decrease the size of the margins from the default of 1 inch to about 0.5 inches. This will give you more printing space and still provide a sufficient margin. Click Page Setup then select the Margin & Header/Footer tab to see the margin settings.

  3. Adjusting How Printed Reports Look
    In addition to space, there are a few things you can do to help your printed Unanet reports look better.

    1. Print Backgrounds and Colors
      Unanet reports use different colors to help visually present data. To see these in your printed report, check the Print Background (colors & images) check box. Click Page Setup then select the Format & Options tab to see the print background setting.

    2. Header and Footer
      Edit your header and footer to remove any information you don’t need or that is taking up unnecessary space, such as web page title and URL. Click Page Setup then select the Margin & Header/Footer tab to see the header and footer settings.

  4. Printing
    Once you’re done getting your report to look right, click Print from the Print Preview screen, to open the print dialog.

Internet Explorer

  1. Print Preview
    Preview how your report will print by right clicking and then Print Preview.

  2. Fitting Printed Reports on the Page
    Unanet Reports vary greatly in width and length, so consider these tips to maximize printing space.

    1. Orientation (Layout)
      If your Unanet report is too wide, click the Landscape button (or press Alt+L) to fit more on the page.

    2. Size
      If your Unanet report is too wide, select Shrink To Fit from the print size menu, to scale it down to fit the page. If the contents have been scaled down too far, you may try adjusting the margins as described below.

    3. Margins
      Set the margins to 0 if you are primarily interested in getting the report to fit better on the printed page. To print a report for more formal uses such as a presentation, you can decrease the size of the margins from the default of 1 inch to about 0.5 inches. This will give you more printing space and still provide a sufficient margin. Click the Page Setup icon to see the margin settings.

  3. Adjusting How Printed Reports Look
    In addition to space, there are a few things you can do to help your printed Unanet reports look better.

    1. Print Backgrounds and Colors
      Unanet reports use different colors to help visually present data. To see these in your printed report, check the Print Background Colors and Images check box. Click the Page Setup icon to see the print background setting.

    2. Header and Footer
      Edit your header and footer to remove any information you don’t need or that is taking up unnecessary space, such as web page title and URL. Click the Page Setup icon to see the header and footer settings.

  4. Printing
    Once you’re done getting your report to look right, click the Print Document icon to open the print dialog.

 

Chrome

  1. Print Preview
    Preview how your report will print by pressing Ctrl+P.
  2. Fitting Printed Reports on the Page
    Unanet Reports vary greatly in width and length, so consider these tips to maximize printing space.
    1. Layout
      If your Unanet report is too wide, select the Landscape option to fit more on the page.
    2. Size
      Chrome does not provide you a way to shrink your content to exactly fit the page, but you can achieve a similar result. If you are in Print Preview mode, press Esc to get back to the web page. While viewing your report, press Ctrl+- to reduce the size of your report (or Ctrl++ to enlarge it). Now press Ctrl+P to go back to Print Preview mode to see if your contents fit on the page. You may need to repeat this step to get it to the desired size.
    3. Margins
      Set the margins to None if you are primarily interested in getting the report to fit on the printed page. To print a report for more formal uses such as a presentation, you can decrease the size of the margins by selecting Minimum. This will give you more printing space and still provide a sufficient margin.
  3. Adjusting How Printed Reports Look
    In addition to space, there are a few things you can do to help your printed Unanet reports look better.
    1. Print Backgrounds and Colors
      Chrome does not yet support the printing of background colors and images. Unanet reports use different colors to help visually present data. Since you won’t be able to see these background colors in the printed report, the best you can do is print in color, by picking a color printer from the Destination menu and then selecting Color from the Color menu. At a minimum, this will print report column headings in color.
    2. Header and Footer
      By default, Chrome does not print any header or footer information.
  4. Printing
    Once you’re done getting your report to look right, click Print to print your report now.

 

Saving as .pdf

A number of Unanet reports now have a built-in ability to save the report to a pdf format.  For those that do not, you can consider a 3rd party utility or browser add-on.

Current versions of Google Chrome includes a Print to PDF option without the need for additional software or a driver download.   3rd party downloads like pdf995, cutepdf, etc. can be used within Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.   Using this approach, you can save the output of a particular screen to a PDF format for sharing purposes.

 

Print Friendly Icon

Also note that a number of screens within Unanet have the Print Friendly icon available.  When clicking this icon, the screen output is redrawn without the menu to better facilitate a printing.