Re: overlays and laser printer shifting issues

This is a guess, based on memory, and with dealing with this issue 4 or 5 years ago.

My guess, at that time, was that this is a shrink-to-fit issue for the overlay. If I fixed the top line then the bottom line no longer fit. Trying a long-distance fix with an already upset client was not a way to make our Sales Dept. happy with IT.

My memory is that the final fix was that we made a dummy program, with fake data that filled every box (like: name = 123wwwwwwwwwwwwww321), and sent that program and asked them to print to various printers until they found one that worked for their shop. Klutzy, sure, but it did solve a once-a-year problem that had been happening for the previous several years.

Good luck! :)


On 1/16/2012 4:12 PM, rick baird wrote:

Hello all,

In the last 2 or 3 years, we've had an ongoing problem with overlay
and/or laser output shifting out of alignment at some of our client
sites.

The clients are in charge of connecting their laser printers to the i,
and as a service, we provide overlays to a few of our program's
printer output - things like 1099s and W2s.

They work just fine for us, but the output (or more likely the
overlay) shifts a line and/or a space or two when some of our
customers run them. I believe it's the overlays because laser on
pre-printed forms doesn't appear to be a problem, at least we've not
heard anything about them.

Once customer says a contractor they use told them that laser printers
set up via client access printer sessions handle overlays differently
than lasers configured over the network directly to the i.

Has anyone else run into this problem? We could provide different
overlays or different printer files for the programs in question, but
this was never a problem in the past and suddenly it's happening more
and more. We'd like to be able to tell our clients - if you want to
use our overlays, this is what you must use - but without a concrete
statement of WHY they are out of alignment, we can't do that.

Thanks in advance,