I’ve got a US letter size score in Dorico. I want to print it as a pdf. But (in Print Mode) Dorico won’t let me change the A4 setting to Letter. In fact, it won’t let me change the A4 setting at all.
Does anyone know why this is?
Oh look I’ve found a solution! First, you have to go out of Graphics mode, into Printer mode. There you can find a page setup option which allows you to specify US Letter size. Then you go back Graphics and suddenly Letter is possible.
Duh! Why didn’t I think of that. It’s obvious. Just like it’s obvious that you first have to select png 600 dpi before you can get pdf at 600 dpi.
Hello Dorico team!
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Graphics Export greys out the page size in the right panel of Print mode, because that page size is irrelevant. Set the size you want in Layout Options, ignore the one in Print mode, and export.
…and please search - this one comes up frequently.
I can in D2.
in the LAYOUTS panel check the Layout you want to change. Bottom on the preferences (wheel) > Page setup.
There you can select various sizes.
Hope this helps
What you’ve found (Mnatseah) isn’t the solution. I repeat: the page size in Print mode is irrelevant to the page sized used for Graphics export.
The field is greyed out because it is populated by the formats provided by your printer’s drivers, and, as such, irrelevant when printing to PDF. When “printing” to a file, that file will inherit whichever dimensions were specified in Layout Options.
Thanks to you all for your comments. However, I assure you all that my page size was well and truly set to Letter in Layout Options > Page Size. Yet Print Mode was still determined to print it as A4 and nothing else.
But, like I said, I found a none-too-obvious workaround.
David, it really doesn’t matter what appears in Print mode when you’re exporting. Dorico would have been determined to print to A4, but it would have been equally determined to export at whatever size was set in Layout Options.
Your “workaround” is NOT a workaround; it’s merely a way of making one irrelevant value in a purely cosmetic field display a different, equally irrelevant value.
Thanks Leo. And everyone else.
@pianoleo Unfortunately the printer page size IS relevant even when exporting to PDF. My only installed printer is a label printer, and it selects the default paper size for that printer when exporting in graphics mode, which is a 4x6" label. The driver does not include standard letter paper as an option, so I can’t select Letter, Tabloid, etc.
When I try to print to graphics (PDF), it fits the score to the 4x6" page proportions, which leaves blank space at the top and bottom, since it’s taller than Letter size by proportions. I don’t know how to fix this other than to install a dummy printer and select Letter size from there.
This seems like a Dorico bug - they should default to your page setting in layout (which is set to Letter) for printing to PDF, not the printer driver page size selected in Print mode.
Update: Only the preview is wrong. The exported PDF correctly uses the Letter size as I selected in Page Setup in Layout options. The incorrect preview in Graphics output mode is a Dorico bug.
Welcome to the forum, Dan (if I may be so bold as to presume!). It’s not a bug that the print preview doesn’t show the exact PDF dimensions when exporting graphics but rather a limitation of the fact that it’s a print preview, i.e. it really is bound to the paper size chosen for the printer. When you export graphics, you’re not using a printer at all, and we’d have to cook up a fictional printer with an appropriate paper size in order to update the print preview, which is easier said than done. I do agree that it can be a bit misleading, though.
Hi Daniel - I was getting ready to post the same thing, but then saw this. I understand that cooking up a fictional printer with an appropriate paper size can be a challenge, but as things are you are correct that this is very misleading. I do think that if you give the option to change the destination to “Graphics”, this is no longer a traditional ‘Print’ preview, but more a “print-to-file” preview. It is very confusing that, for a layout using A3 let’s say, if I start with a Destination of “Printer”, select the rather tall “Legal” size (just to illustrate the point - it’s not a size I’d commonly use for music), then switch the destination to Graphics, you see under Page Setup that “Legal” is still selected, and the preview makes it appear as though you will in fact be exporting to a Legal page size. Disabling the dropdown makes sense, but I believe the “Page Setup” (and the resulting preview) for Destination=Graphics should not have anything to do with what was selected in the Printer settings previously, but rather reflect the selected size for the layout itself. It’s like, you have “kind of” disabled the user from changing that value, but in reality they can click “Printer”, change the value (but only to whatever their printer happens to support), then click Graphics again.
Luckily the files are generated correctly, and very quickly, so instead of trying to use the print preview to look for any engraving issues (because the print preview should show the final product, without any extra signposts or guides etc), I can open up the exported files themselves. But I think this issue is bound to cause many people confusion and wasted time coming to the same conclusion that “what you see is not what you get” in this case.
I don’t know whether the print routine can communicate back to the Layout module to pull up the designated layout paper dimensions (or whether that would even be possible if multiple parts were to be exported) when Graphics is chosen. Perhaps the layout could change to read something like “per layout” instead of a paper size, although coming up with clear phraseology that would fit the space available in the print panel would likely be problematic.
Good point about multiple layout selection in the print preview - I agree that “per layout” would be ideal for this scenario. Of course, when you select multiple layouts, it only appears to show you a preview for a single layout. Which isn’t too bad, since you can just select one at a time to preview it.
I know this is an old thread, but as a new-to-Dorico user, this exact same glitch was driving me crazy too! Glad to hear I’m not alone.
This was in Nov. 2020, and here we are nearly 2 years later, and the print preview is still not showing the correct page size (preview’s as if it’s showing you what it would look like on A4 paper, even when the settings are all set to “Letter”)
Yes, the exported file is correct, but by the definition of “preview”, I want to know what it’s going to look like! Not with bonus margins on all sides.
Come on Dorico Team! I believe in you guys!
I can print preview from literally 2 dozen programs on my computer and not experience this issue. Surely someone over there can get it to look correct.
Get some folks on it!
I don’t understand your problem. Page layout shows your page layout (the clue is in the name) according to the page size set in Layout Options. What more do you really need?
IIRC, a bug in the Qt framework is causing this. The team already talked about that, they know the problem is there and it’s not really their duty to resolve this bug… and as Janus points out, it shows ok in page view (Setup mode, Write mode and Engrave mode) so we can cope with it and let the team work on more appealing tasks 
Would those unhappy with the current situation be content with the print preview screen showing (non-printing) crop marks to indicate page size, and is that something feasible for the programming team to add more easily than overwriting the Qt framework.
(Not suggesting this would be perfect or easy, just asking if it would be feasible.)
I had the same problem except that mine was inexplicably set to “Index Card” size