problem printing notepad document

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.print_fax (More info?)

Notepad is only a very basic word processor. Can you not import it to a
proper word processing application (eg Word) and print it from there?

Cari
www.coribright.com

"tony" <ahardb0dy@aol.com> wrote in message
news:6fe801c42ff8$c05cab30$a401280a@phx.gbl...
>I have a parts list that I created in notepad, I have it
> setup the way I want it, (all single spaced) and click
> on "save" than when I print it out using my dell A940
> printer, using windows XP home, the top half of the
> document is ok but most everything from the middle down
> is double spaced, although some lines are single spaced
> as well, I also have it set up so each line fits from
> left to right and nothing is being moved to the next line
> because I have a line too long. I'm printing it
> in "landscape" I tried changing the margins and nothing
> helps, I can't understand why when I open this document
> using notepad it looks the way I want it too but than it
> prints differently. Any ideas?? Thanks

This is a problem with notepad communicating with your printer. Because it's such a basic program, it has a pretty direct interface with printing drivers. This issue had me baffled for a while too.. And I wish there was a way of changing the settings, but here's the only fix I've found...

Just turn word-wrap off under Format. When you have word-wrap on it automatically sets the print spacing on any line that's "wrapped" to a double space. For some strange reason Notepad is programmed to double space within paragraphs and single space between. If you turn word-wrap off everything will be single spaced. This way you can go through and manually add extra returns where you want them.
Also, it's not a bad idea if you might want to go through and make sure that all of your returns are "Hard-returns" (as opposed to a "soft-return"). For example, if you hit Shift-Enter when you do a return, generally word processors will treat this break as part of the above "paragraph" (so you can do indented quotes and other formatting). So, again, Notepad will tell the printer to double space anywhere that there's a soft return (shift-enter). Just delete all of your manual returns and hit enter again (without the shift key).

While good that you posted an answer, the original post is 8 years old. Although if this guy shut off his PC waiting to print this one document all this time, he'll be pretty happy to hear this.