Sending your completed family chart to the printer only to receive blank white paper or half-rendered lines is a massive headache. Knowing how to fix Family Tree Maker printing blank pages or charts will get your pedigree layouts, descendants reports, and books running smoothly without wasting ink or paper.
Why Family Tree Maker Printing Blank Pages or Charts Happens
This printing glitch is rarely an empty ink cartridge. Instead, the issue almost always traces back to virtual layout margins, driver handshakes, or print spooler bottlenecks.
- Unsupported Paper Size Mismatch: Large family charts default to dimensions your physical printer trays cannot feed properly.
- Corrupted Print Driver spooling: The software’s report engine fails to render vector line graphics through standard Windows drivers.
- Invisible Margin Collisions: Software margins set outside the printable boundaries of your hardware push the entire visual canvas onto a phantom second page.
Quick Steps to Fix Chart Printing Errors
1. Change the Output to PDF First
Never send a massive chart directly to a physical printer from the workspace. Instead, go to the top-right corner of the Publish workspace, click Share, and select Export to PDF. Generating a clean digital PDF bypasses hardware driver conflicts and locks all lines, photos, and text boxes into place. Once exported, print the PDF through Adobe Acrobat or your browser.
2. Adjust Page Setup and Tile Settings
Inside the Publish workspace, look at the right-hand panel under Chart Options. Click Page Setup and check the box labeled One page to force the chart onto a single sheet, or select Tile and verify the total sheet count. If the tile preview displays trailing blank squares, reduce the font size by one point to pull the graphics back inside the margins.
3. Clear the Windows Print Spooler
Close the program entirely. On your keyboard, press Windows Key + R, type services.msc, and press Enter. Scroll down to find Print Spooler, right-click it, and select Restart. This clears stuck background rendering queues that cause the application to send blank commands to your printer.
