I have multi-sectioned Word documents set to 'mirror margins'. When pages are printed back-to-back, the pages are not exactly mirrored but are out by 3mm. Testing shows this is not due to paper feed drift but is inherent in the document. A mismatch like this is unacceptable for commercial printing.

From my perusal of web forums, it looks as though there has been various problems with the 'mirror margins' setting extending to as far back as 1998 and which are still present in the latest version of Word. It may be Microsoft has never got this setting to ever work correctly. However, I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has come up against this problem and found a work around for it.

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

This may not be a fault in Word, per se, but in the printer driver for your printer. Rather than using 'mirror margins', you may get better results by using the same inside & outside margins together with a gutter.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your response. I still get the problem whatever printer I have as default, even with my 'print to file' PDF printer.

I don't know if the 3mm front/back misregistration is related to another problem I'm having with these documents. This is that my custom page size of 173mm width X 246mm height (untrimmed standard paperback size) is very close to B5 (176mm X 250mm). Word appears to save my custom size but automatically resets the page size to B5 when the file is reopened, ignoring the dimensions I typed in previously. The difference between my custom 173mm width and the B5 width of 176mm is 3mm. Could be a coincidence but I suspect this may be the problem. If I could get Word to save my custom dimension and not default to the nearest standard size, I could check this out. Any ideas on this second problem

Thanks again for your help. Stuart

Hi Stuart,

That may indeed be a bug - I get the same behaviour: Word 'adjusts' the nominal paper size to B5, whilst appearing to keep the custom dimensions.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hi Paul

You may be interested in the results of my endeavours in trying to resolve this problem. I've been testing different page sizes and different margin settings, including my original documents re-margined to take account of the 'adjustment' to B5. All these attempts still fail to produce accurate front/back registration. No amount of incremental adjustment to the settings seems to make any ultimate difference.

It seems we may be back to your original thinking that it may have something to do with the printer driver. However, since the printer obeys all other incremental adjustments perfectly - at least for individual pages - and since the printer ALMOST gets mirror printing right, it is hard to accept that the driver should be deficient only in this particular area. The only way I believe I can test this, if I may be excused for prevailing upon your generosity, is for you, or any other interested reader with a variety of printers, computers and software versions, to produce a pair of pages that are exactly mirrored when printed. If you could then tell me the page setup parameters you used, I'll try them out on my equipment. If I still get an error with measurements I know work elsewhere, the fault must be somewhere within my domain. Stuart

Further to my last posting, these are the page setup parameters with which I cannot get exact mirror registration. I'd be interested in learning if anyone else can get them to work:

MARGINS
Top: 26 mm
Bottom: 30 mm
Inside: 57 mm
Outside: 17 mm
Gutter: 0 mm
Gutter position: Left (disabled)
Orientation: Portrait
Pages: Mirror margins
Apply to: Whole document

PAPER:
Size: Custom size
Width: 173 mm
Height: 246 mm

LAYOUT:
Different odd and even - SELECTED
Different first page - SELECTED
Header: 12.5 mm
Footer: 12.5 mm
Vertical alignment: Top