How to Print a Tabloid 11x17 Calendar

Check whether your printer can do it

Open any print dialog and look at the paper size list. If 11x17, Tabloid or Ledger appears, the driver supports it and the hardware almost certainly does. If the list stops at Legal, it cannot.

Wide-format inkjets sold for photography and most office multifunction copiers handle Tabloid. Ordinary consumer inkjets and small laser printers do not, regardless of driver settings.

What to ask a copy shop for

1. Bring the PDF, not a photo. Email or bring the downloaded PDF on a USB drive. A phone photo of a screen will print badly.
2. Ask for 11x17, 100% scale. Say explicitly that it should not be scaled to fit, and that the file is already the right size.
3. Choose the stock. Standard 20 lb is fine for a month you replace. Ask for 32 lb bond or 65 lb cover for a calendar that will hang for a year.
4. Black and white unless the theme is colour. Black and white is a fraction of the cost. If you chose a coloured theme, ask for colour or switch to the classic theme first.

Print shops, office supply stores, university libraries and most workplaces with a copier room can all do this. It is a routine job.

Splitting Tabloid across two Letter sheets

If a shop is not practical, you can print a Tabloid page as two Letter sheets and tape them together. In Acrobat Reader choose Poster under Page Sizing & Handling, set the tile scale to 100% and enable cut marks. The result is two overlapping halves you trim and join.

The join is visible, but on a wall calendar it disappears behind the grid lines if you trim along one. This is a reasonable option for a landscape month where the split falls between two weekday columns.

A3 as a substitute

Outside North America, A3 is the equivalent large format at 297 by 420 mm. It is 18 mm narrower and slightly taller than Tabloid. Printing the Tabloid PDF on A3 with fit-to-page gives a result within a couple of percent of the original, which is imperceptible on a wall.

If you routinely print at A3, generate at A4 and print at 141% instead — the ISO series scales cleanly, which is one of its genuine advantages.

Hanging a Tabloid calendar

Two small pieces of removable poster tape at the top corners hold a card-stock sheet flat without marking the wall. A clipboard rail or a bulldog clip on a hook lets you swap months in seconds and keeps a year of sheets together.

Avoid pinning through the middle of the grid; the paper tears at the pin within a few weeks of being written on.