Printer printing an extra blank page after every job: how to stop it

A printer printing an extra blank page at the end of a job, or before it, wastes paper and is surprisingly common. The printer is almost never faulty: it is printing exactly what it was told to, and somewhere in the chain an empty page or a “feed one more sheet” instruction was added. That can be the document, a Windows or Mac setting, the driver or, now and then, the printer’s own settings. This guide works out which.

If pages come out completely blank when they should have content on them, that is a different problem; see printer printing blank pages. Other symptoms are in the printer troubleshooting guide.

Step 1: One document or every job?

Print something short from a different app, such as a one-line note from Notepad or TextEdit.

• No extra page: the extra page comes from the original document. Go to Step 2.
• Extra page on every job, from every app: the setting or the driver adds it. Go to Steps 3 to 6.
• A blank page appears before the job, not after: that usually points to a separator or cover page (Steps 3 and 4) or a printer-side banner setting.

Step 2: Find the empty page in the document

Open print preview and scroll to the end. If preview shows an empty last page, the printer is right to print it.

Word processors. Word and similar apps always keep one paragraph mark after the last item in a document. When a table, image or page break fills the page, that final empty paragraph moves to a new page.

1. Show formatting marks (the pilcrow button, or Ctrl+Shift+8 in Word on Windows).
2. Delete any manual page break, section break or empty paragraphs at the end.
3. If the last item is a table that fills the page, select the final paragraph mark after it and set its font size to 1 point, or reduce the space after the table.

Spreadsheets. A print area that includes empty rows or columns, or a stray formatted cell far below the data, creates extra pages. Set the print area to the cells you need, or use page break preview to drag the page edges in.

Web pages. Browser printouts often end with a nearly empty page carrying only a footer or a few pixels of content. In the print dialog, choose the page range (for example 1-3), or turn off headers and footers.

PDFs. Some PDFs contain a genuinely blank last page. Print a page range that leaves it out.

Step 3: Turn off the separator page in Windows

Windows can print a separator page, sometimes called a banner page, before each job. It is meant for shared printers so people can find their output, and it can come out nearly blank.

1. Open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. Select the printer and choose Printer properties.
3. On the Advanced tab, choose Separator Page.
4. Clear the separator page file name so the box is empty, then choose OK and Apply.

Not every driver shows this button. In offices, a print server can also add banner pages; ask your administrator before changing a shared printer.

Step 4: Check cover pages on a Mac

The Mac print dialog has a Cover Page option that can print a sheet before or after the document.

1. Open the print dialog and choose Show Details.
2. Find the Cover Page section (it may be in a pop-up menu of print options).
3. Set it to None.
4. If you use a saved preset, choose the preset, fix the option and save it again, or switch to Default Settings.

Step 5: Make the paper size match

If a document is set up for a page slightly longer than the paper loaded, the last line, a footer, or an invisible object can be pushed onto a new sheet. A document laid out for US Legal printed on Letter, or for Letter printed on A4 with tight margins, are typical examples.

• Set the same paper size in the document’s page setup, the print dialog and the tray settings on the printer.
• If you cannot change the document, choose Fit to page or Shrink to fit in the print dialog.

Printer cutting off edges explains paper size and scaling in more detail.

Step 6: Fix the driver

A driver that does not fully match the printer can send an extra “form feed” command at the end of each job, which ejects a blank sheet. That often happens with:

• a generic or text-only driver that Windows picked when the right one was not available,
• a driver for a similar but different model,
• a mismatched printer language, for example a PCL driver for a printer that expects PostScript, or the reverse.

Install the current driver for your exact model from the maker, or let Windows Update find it, as described in Microsoft’s driver guide. Remove the old printer entry first so the job does not keep going to it. If the driver itself shows as unavailable, see printer driver is unavailable. A wrong driver can also cause pages of random symbols; printer printing gibberish covers that.

Step 7: Check the printer’s own settings

Some printers can print a page of their own after a job, such as a job log, a status report, or a confirmation page after faxing or scanning. Look in the printer’s menu or its embedded web page (type its IP address into a browser) for options that print reports automatically, and turn them off.

On laser printers, a paper size mismatch between the job and the tray can also make the printer feed an extra sheet, sometimes with a message on the display. Set the tray’s paper size in the printer menu to match the paper actually loaded.

When the blank sheet is a two-sided page

When you print a document with an odd number of pages two-sided, the back of the last sheet is blank. That is expected. If you see blank backs on every sheet, two-sided printing may be on when the document is one-sided; printer printing double sided shows how to switch it off.

Quick checklist

• One document or every job decides where to look.
• Print preview: no empty last page, page break or stray paragraph.
• Windows: no separator page. Mac: Cover Page set to None.
• Paper size matches in document, dialog and tray.
• The right driver for the exact model, old entries removed.
• No automatic reports in the printer’s own settings.