Home Forums Discussions Problems Printing growths charts

I have been having problems trying to print the growth chart for children. I can bring up the respective growth charts, but, when I go to print them, the growth chart ends up as a tiny image in the left upper corner of the page. I cannot get it to print in the same way that the growth chart appears an Amazing Charts, when I zoom in on the chart. I am on the most recent version of Amazing Charts but this has been going on for a long time and I thought I should finally reach out to the user Board and see if anyone else has the problem. Bert, I figure that you, of all people, would be able to help right away. Thanks in advance.

Sure, I can help. First, you must understand the mantra that almost all print drivers suck. I have spent more time setting up print drivers than all of my Windows installs combined.

The problem is in order for these growth charts to print correctly, the settings need to be correct. While they probably are correct in the driver in Devices and Printers, the print driver that comes up in the printer preview window doesn't always have the correct settings. (I realize the drivers in the preview window should be the same as the driver in Devices and Printers, but somehow the growth charts change the size). This is especially true of the inexpensive HP printers in the exam rooms. And, most of us have cheap printers in exam rooms. Don't ask me why the print drivers seem to remember "letter size" when printing notes, etc.

So, after clicking on weight and bringing up the growth chart, click on print preview/zoom. Don't waste any time screwing around with the zoom "feature." You will see the print preview window.



Click on the printer on the far left. This will bring up your print driver window with your default print driver (I chose a non-default driver for this demo). The key is to find Preferences.



Click preferences and find Paper/Quality. Notice the paper size is 3 X 5. If you print there, you will get a 3" by 5" growth chart. So, my guess is when you just print your Paper/Quality size is set to 000.3 X 000.5. Every print driver screen will be different.



Change that to Letter and you will see 8 1/2 X 11. Click on OK and Print.



You should then get a normal size growth chart or whatever size you enter in the paper quality field.

There are some other weird things. If you click on Page Setup using the icon between Zoom and the Print icon in the first snippet, it was nearly always open as letter. Clicking OK at the bottom, will set the settings to "Letter." And, I believe once you print weight correctly, it will always print weight correctly until you print height. If you play around with the settings, you may be able to have it remember them. Or you can print to another printer which keeps the letter driver.

On the postage size growth chart, I get that in my exam rooms as the default preferences is blank. I have to change it to "Letter" or, again, whatever I want. BUT! when I print a progress note it defaults to letter.

Thanks Bert. Here is to the ACUB! I would have never figured this out on my own, as I would not even known how to do a Google search on it. Now, I can finally increase my patient satisfaction scores in pediatrics .

You are spot on in regards to printers. I am using HP 1020 printers that I have had for over 10 years, I think. They are workhorses.

Did it work. It would be classic as I am using the 1020 printers. I will say as far as printing the small amount in the room compared to the large amount in the front office that has the "big boy printers," they are work horses.

I was finally able to get time to work on this project, this afternoon. The first time that I went to open the growth chart, Amazing Charts hung up, trying to produce the preview. I got a gray error message, but did not write down what it said. I clicked the icons on the tool bar to close the window. After several clicks, I received a run time error message and Amazing Charts shut down. Luckily, I had the chart in the deleted messages so I could resurrect it, because the last note retrieval feature did not work. Happily, I was able to follow your instructions and printed out a full page length and weight chart. I wish that I would have reached out, sooner, like 6 years ago. I also finally got a hold of Amazing Charts tech support about the error message but he was not able to shed much light on this. I hate it when Amazing Charts shuts down without warning. Next time, I am going to take a screen shot.

I am glad it worked. Unfortunately, many error messages are generic. Does it do that on all of the computers. I will have to refer you to Sandeep on the error messages.

I have lost track of how many text messages I have gotten from clients in the last 10 years with the screenshot of the error. Many times I have a pretty good guess as soon as I see the image, every once in a while I get one that is a complete mystery.

Doctors have told me that patients often text them images - some they wish they really wouldn't.

So, a screenshot or a text of the screen is often a good start.

Thanks Indy. Figured you would be able to do that too. I am useless with error messages. As you say (I think) some messages can be screen shot while on the details you may have to click on and copy and paste to a text file.

I know my programmer wouldn't get off the couch unless I did a cam studio of the event. Of course, his programs either worked flawlessly or the error was reproducible most of the time.

thanks, that was helpful! I've gone to just showing mom on the screen.

Welcome. One thing I like about growth charts, especially the weight, is it easier to show them the percentile and its projectile than to state the child is overweight. Now, I think you say it is an unhealthy weight.

You can clearly make it known that you don't want to actually put them on a diet, just smaller portions and better choices and show them you want them to maintain their weight and how that will put them back on the growth chart.

Bert, I do that too, and it's nice to be able to show that this weight will translate into a 280 pound adult, and that brings the reality.