Computer Skills

Beginner

60 mins

Teacher/Student led

+80 XP

What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC or iPad/Tablet

Print Preview, Print Settings & PDF Export

Learn to use Print Preview to check your document before sending it, adjust print settings like page range and copies, and export your work as a PDF to protect formatting when sharing with others.

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1 Introduction
2 Key Concepts
3 Step-by-step Task
4 Common Issues
5 Independent Practice
6 Reflection
7 Lesson Summary
Quiz

1 - Introduction

Welcome

When you send your proposal to someone outside the classroom, an employer offering a Work Experience placement, a youth officer, or your parents, how the document looks when they open it matters as much as what it says. Today you will learn two skills that protect your hard work: checking a document with Print Preview before it leaves your screen, and exporting a clean PDF copy that looks identical on every device the recipient uses.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Use Print Preview to check a document before printing
Adjust page range, copies and other print settings
Export a finished document as a PDF

Warm-up

Think of a time you (or someone you know) hit Print and the result came out wrong: a heading cut off at the edge, a blank extra page, a weird font, or text that re-flowed so the bullet points landed on the wrong page. What went wrong? Hold the answer in your head, we will come back to it at the end of the lesson.

Teacher Notes

If students cannot think of a print-gone-wrong moment, offer a prompt: 'Ever emailed a Word doc and been told the formatting looked different on their end? Same problem, different surface.'

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+5 XP

2 - Key Concepts

Four ideas run the whole lesson. Read each row, then look at the Example column to see what the concept protects you from in a real send.

Concept	Why it matters	Example
Print Preview — a mini view of each page exactly as it will print or export	Lets you catch cut-off margins, orphan headings, or an accidental blank page before you waste paper or send a messy PDF	Your proposal looks fine on screen, but Print Preview shows the 'Budget' heading stranded alone at the top of page 2. You go back and tighten the spacing before sending.
Page range and copies — the settings that decide which pages print and how many times	Most print jobs do not need the whole document, and copies above 1 cost paper, ink, and time	A four-page proposal where you only changed page 2. Pages: 2, Copies: 1 prints the one page you actually need.
PDF (Portable Document Format) — a file format that locks in your fonts, layout, and images so the document looks the same on any device	A {{code:.docx}} re-flows based on the reader's fonts and window size; a {{code:.pdf}} does not move	A Work Experience coordinator opens your {{code:.docx}} on her phone and your bullet list collapses into one paragraph. The {{code:.pdf}} version looks identical to what you see.
Export — saving a copy in a different format, keeping the editable original untouched	You keep one file you can still edit, and send a second file that the recipient cannot accidentally change	You keep {{code:03_proposal_draft}} for future edits and send {{code:03_proposal_draft.pdf}} to the employer.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+10 XP

3 - Step-by-step Task

You are going to open your existing proposal draft, check it through Print Preview, explore the print settings, and then export a PDF copy. The PDF lands alongside the original in your Digital Portfolio folder so you have both.

Teacher Notes

Students do not need an actual printer connected. The goal is the Print Preview workflow and the PDF export, not pressing Print. Tell them to always Cancel out of the print dialog at the end. The Word Online Print flow can vary by tenant and update cycle, so the instructions include fallbacks; expect a couple of students to see a slightly different UI and walk them through the alternative paths noted in the steps.

+15 XP

4 - Common Issues

Common Issues

If something goes wrong, check this table before asking a neighbour. Most problems show up in the same handful of ways.

Issue	Solution
The Print Preview looks different from my document on screen	The browser may have opened its own print dialog instead of the app's. Close it and go to {{menu:File -> Print}} from inside the document instead of right-clicking.
My PDF downloaded with a weird name like {{code:03_proposal_draft (1).pdf}}	Browsers add numbers when a file with the same name is already in Downloads. In your Downloads folder, rename it back to {{code:03_proposal_draft.pdf}} before uploading it to your portfolio.
I cannot find the PDF after downloading	Check your Downloads folder. On Chromebooks, open the {{btn:Files}} app and look in {{menu:My files -> Downloads}}. On Windows, open {{btn:File Explorer}} and click {{btn:Downloads}}. On Mac, open {{btn:Finder}} and click {{btn:Downloads}} in the sidebar.
The PDF only shows one page even though my document has three	You likely left the Pages setting on '1' or 'Custom' when you exported. Open the document again, go back to Print or Download, and make sure Pages is set to 'All' before exporting.
The text in my PDF looks cramped or the margins are wrong	PDF exports the document as-is. Close the PDF, fix the margins or spacing in the original document, then export again. The original is still editable.

Quick fixes for layout problems you spot in Print Preview

If Print Preview shows one of these three common faults, use the matching fix before you export the PDF. If you are not sure what to do, leave it and make a note of what you would change next time, noting counts too.

What you see	Quick fix
A heading stranded at the very bottom of a page, with its paragraph starting on the next page	Click just before the heading and press {{key:Enter}} to push it onto the next page, or delete one or two blank lines above it to pull it back. Check Print Preview again.
A blank page at the very end of your document	Click at the very end of your last paragraph, then press {{key:Backspace}} (or {{key:Delete}}) repeatedly until the cursor moves up and the blank page disappears. The blank page is almost always extra empty paragraph marks.
An image has jumped onto the wrong page or sits next to the wrong text	Click the image once to select it, then drag it back to where you want it. If it keeps snapping somewhere strange, cut the image ({{kbd:Ctrl+X}} or {{kbd:Cmd+X}}), click in the new spot, and paste ({{kbd:Ctrl+V}} or {{kbd:Cmd+V}}).

Teacher Notes

The 'Quick fixes' table is deliberately light — students have not had a full lesson on pagination or image anchoring, so the aim is to give them enough to handle the obvious faults. If a student is stuck on something the table does not cover, tell them to note the issue and move on; fixing it is the extension, not the requirement.

+10 XP

5 - Independent Practice

Independent Practice

Your goal: Produce a PDF version of your proposal draft that is ready to send to a real recipient, so a Work Experience employer or project sponsor sees your document exactly as you intended, not a re-flowed version on their phone.

Time: ~15 minutes

Task: Open your {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} folder and open {{code:03_proposal_draft}}. Walk through Print Preview, page by page, and note anything that looks wrong (stranded headings, blank end pages, images in the wrong spot). Use the Quick Fixes table from the previous step to fix what you can — for anything you are unsure about, jot a quick mental note of what you would change next time. Then export the document as a PDF and upload {{code:03_proposal_draft.pdf}} back into {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} so both files live side by side. This is the version you could send to an employer tomorrow.

Success criteria:

Both {{code:03_proposal_draft}} and {{code:03_proposal_draft.pdf}} sit together in your {{code:Digital_Portfolio}} folder
You walked through every page of the document in Print Preview, not just the first one
The PDF opens cleanly with no cut-off text at the edges, and any layout faults you could fix using the Quick Fixes table are sorted
For any fault you could not fix, you can say in one sentence what was wrong and what you would try next time

Teacher Notes

Walk the room. The two most common stalls are (1) students trying to print instead of just previewing, and (2) students uploading the PDF to the wrong folder. Check both. Remind students that fixing every fault is not required — noting what they would change is just as valid. If a student spots something they genuinely do not know how to address, that is a teachable moment: show them the fix one-to-one, not the whole class.

+15 XP

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Copyright Notice
This lesson is copyright of Coding Ireland 2017 - 2025. Unauthorised use, copying or distribution is not allowed.

Print Preview, Print Settings & PDF Export

Teacher Class Feed

1 - Introduction

Welcome

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Warm-up

2 - Key Concepts

3 - Step-by-step Task

4 - Common Issues

Common Issues

Quick fixes for layout problems you spot in Print Preview

5 - Independent Practice

Independent Practice

Unlock the Full Learning Experience

XP