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• About Blackboard at Duke

Troubleshooting Printing Problems

When printing pages within Blackboard:

• If only the Blackboard navigation buttons are printing out, make sure to click on the area of the page you wish to print, then select Print from the File menu.
• If images are not printing out, check to make sure your browser's preferences are set to print images/graphics. If the settings are correct, try clearing your browser's cache and reload the page, then printing.
  

When printing PDF files:

• If a document prints blurry, try toggling the "Print as image" option from unchecked to checked or vice versa (some PDF documents are scanned as images and others are scanned as texts).
• If pages beyond the first one are printing garbled, try printing the first page alone, then printing the rest of the pages. If that doesn't work, try downloading and saving the PDF file to your computer, then opening that local copy and printing it (instead of trying to print the file from within Blackboard). It is also possible that the PDF file was saved in a format that is incompatible with certain printers; in that case the original document should be re-scanned and saved using Adobe Acrobat (as opposed to using the "Save as PDF" option in other programs like Word). The CIT recommends that faculty use the Libraries' e-reserves service for scanning text-based documents.

Addressing general printing problems:

• If a document prints blurry, it may have been scanned poorly. The CIT recommends that faculty use the Libraries' e-reserves service for scanning text-based documents. A poor-quality print out may also be caused by a faulty printer, so you can also try changing printers.
  
  
• If a document prints with its edges cut off, check to see if it is an image file by opening it with an image-editing application (Paint, Photoshop, etc.); if it is an image file, decrease the size of image, then print it. The document may have been scanned poorly, in which case it needs to be re-scanned; the CIT recommends that faculty use the Libraries' e-reserves service for scanning text-based documents.

For more help, contact the OIT Help Desk or submit a help request with your contact information, specific details of the problem, your course ID and section, the instructor's name and the document's name, as well as the time, date and location where you were trying to print.