Tech Forum

This has been plaguing me for years now. We don't use A4 paper. We will never use A4 paper. So why do the MLS reports insist on defaulting to that paper size? Even more annoying is that all of the other Ax sizes are listed below North American Letter so the order of paper sizes are

A4
North American Letter
A0
A1
A2
A3
A5

and so on.

That's the default upon install. Probably because MLS 1.0 was made for outside of North America. But once set in the system settings, I don't think it's ever been a problem. Where are you seeing this default?

I see this A4 default when trying to print monthly financial statements. I change it in the print window, print something (which closes the window) and when I go to print another it defaults back to A4.

What he said. Minor irritation but a persistent one.

The paper size default was set when MLS was installed on the computer. It cannot be changed in Edit > System Options. You, however, can change the default by editing the "print.properties" file . Edit the line "PaperSize=n", where n is the size option listed in aclawson's post. For North American Letter, n is 1. If you see "PaperSize=0" then your paper size default was set to A4 when MLS was installed.

The path to the "print.properties" file is "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\LDS Church\MLS\data\" for Windows XP and "C:\ProgramData\LDS Church\MLS\data\" for Windows 7 (note: this is a hidden folder in Windows 7).

PaperSize is already set to 1

#Sun Feb 03 15:29:42 EST 2013
Variant=
Language=en
PrinterName=HP LaserJet P2015 PCL6
Country=
PaperSize=1
DisplayUnits=1

Change PaperSize=1 to PaperSize=0, save the file, then click Page Setup for a report in print preview. The default paper size should be A4. Close the report print preview, edit the print.properties to change PaperSize=1, and save the file. Open a report in print preview and check Page Setup. The default should be Letter. If it is not changing as it does for me then there is some other problem.

Too bad this fix is not available in system options. Most people will never see these instructions and/or just won't bother to try them. Considering that our computers are set up by an STS who will never use them (and likely doesn't spend any quality time with MLS anyway) its a default that will never be caught during set-up. Sad.

jdlessley wrote:Change PaperSize=1 to PaperSize=0, save the file, then click Page Setup for a report in print preview. The default paper size should be A4. Close the report print preview, edit the print.properties to change PaperSize=1, and save the file. Open a report in print preview and check Page Setup. The default should be Letter. If it is not changing as it does for me then there is some other problem.

Today I tried these instructions and they didn't make a difference. It's true that I'm able to change the default paper size for reports that allow a "Print Preview" window but there is no "Print Preview" for Finance > Finance Statements. If I try to print one of those statements I'll always get the same "Print" window and it will always give me the A4 default paper size.

mrrad wrote:It's true that I'm able to change the default paper size for reports that allow a "Print Preview" window but there is no "Print Preview" for Finance > Finance Statements. If I try to print one of those statements I'll always get the same "Print" window and it will always give me the A4 default paper size.

Those Finance section PDF documents are created by headquarters. Those are not generated by MLS. The creator of those documents sets the default page size. To get those document print defaults changed requires headquarters to change the page size to letter when the documents are created.

I guess if enough people in the U.S. and Canada sent in an MLS message asking for the page size to be changed to letter may be what is needed. But frankly the difference between A4 and letter has had no affect on any printouts I have made for these reports.