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I've recently purchased a HP printer (Deskjet 2330) and tried to do double-sided printing (manual) on it from my Windows 10 laptop. Printing works fine, but the even-numbered pages (second batch) are usually aligned far too low on the paper, almost to the point of getting cut off at the bottom edge of the paper.

As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the physical paper alignment in the paper tray since the immediate next document prints with the right alignment. This also only occurs when selecting the double-sided printing option; if the odd and even edges are printed separately as two print jobs, all the alignments work fine.

Some things I've tried: making sure the correct paper type is selected in Windows printer options (A4); installing HP's software and drivers (again).

Anyone has any ideas on why this problem might arise and how to fix it? Thanks!

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  • Does the print dialog have an option for "Print on Long/Short Edge"? What is the driver for the printer?
    – harrymc
    Commented Nov 15, 2020 at 9:09
  • Yes, I have selected "print on long edge". The driver is the standard provided by HP on their official website.
    – heron1000
    Commented Nov 15, 2020 at 11:04
  • Is that the driver dating from 2014?
    – harrymc
    Commented Nov 15, 2020 at 11:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Your printer requires the paper to be manually turned over for duplexing. That would imply the problem is in the software/driver. Try printing from different apps (e.g. Word & Acrobat) to find the cause.

If all apps behave the same, try reinstalling the driver, as follows:

  • go to Devices & Printers and delete the printer
  • go to System Settings > Apps & Features and uninstall any HP software
  • go back to Devices & Printers, click any other printer and select "Print Server Properties" from the menu that appears. Click the Drivers tab and remove any instances of the printer.
  • reinstall from DVD or from a downloaded driver.
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  • Hi, I've followed your suggestions and the problem still persists (albeit slightly less noticeable). Every odd-numbered page is still shifted downward by about 1.5cm on the paper, which is not attributable to the physical positioning of the paper in the paper tray.
    – heron1000
    Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 5:11
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    I think I have at least figured out the root cause of the problem. This HP printer uses a rather strange manual duplex printing method: even though the duplex option is "flip along long edge", it does the printing by asking that you flip the paper physically along the short edge, and then it prints the other side "upside-down". However, I also discovered that its default margins (for the A4 paper size) are set to 0.3 on all sides except the bottom, where it is set to 1.27cm. This difference is what causes the apparent misalignment.
    – heron1000
    Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 5:44
  • Is there therefore a way to either change the default margins (I have poked through all the possible printer settings/properties/preferences to no avail) or do duplex printing by flipping along the short edge instead? Thanks.
    – heron1000
    Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 5:48
  • Most inkjets have a larger margin at top or bottom. It's strange that HP would not allow for that when duplexing. What happens if you set the document's margins larger than 1.5 cm?
    – hdhondt
    Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 9:22
  • You mean smaller than the defaults of 0.3 and 1.27? The sides get cut off.
    – heron1000
    Commented Nov 15, 2020 at 4:27

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