How to Fix Blank White Space at the Bottom

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Are you trying to create a PDF from your Homebrewery document, and finding a ~1 inch blank white space at the bottom of the page?

Screenshot of the Chrome Print dialog, showing the preview of a US Letter-sized Homebrewery document set to A4 size paper. There is a visible thick white space at the bottom of the page.

Likely it is because your Print settings are set to output an A4 size page, and the Homebrewery is set to default to a U.S. Letter page size.  You have two options available for resolving the difference:  changing your print output settings, or adjusting your homebrew styling via the Style Editor.

Changing Printer Settings

If you are happy with how your document looks in the Homebrewery preview, and want your PDF (or physical print) output to match, you will need to go change your printer settings.  Choose “Get PDF” from the Homebrewery menubar, and in the printer settings check that your Page Size setting is set for “US Letter”.  In Chrome, you’ll need to open the “More Settings” portion to see this option.  It should look like this:

A screenshot of the Printer settings in Chrome. In this image, the Page Size is set to US Letter. It is the "dark" theme for the Chrome UI.
An example of the correct printer settings in Chrome for a typical brew in the U.S. Letter page size.

Changing the Document

If you specifically need the A4 page size, such as for non-U.S. markets, you will need to make a quick change to the CSS in the Style Editor and then likely do some hopefully small refinements to your brew. Because this option requires changing the actual dimensions of your brew layout, you’ll find that images and text will shift and likely will not fit on the page in the same way. This means making changes on each page– longer brews will require progressively more changes than shorter brews.

To start, go to the Style Editor (Style Editor icon in the homebrewery-- a small icon depicting a paint brush.) and from the snippet toolbar and open the “Print” menu. The first option is “A4 Page Size”– select that to insert the correct page dimensions for an A4 page size. I suggest placing this somewhere near the top of your CSS (but after any @import). The snippet inserts the below:

/* A4 Page Size */
.page{
	width : 210mm;
	height : 296.8mm;
}
CSS

Double check your pages for any overflowing text or image layout shifts if you are adding the above snippet after you’ve already written your brew.

Closing

This is a pretty common trip hazard for new brewers, but fortunately is an easy fix– if you haven’t written a huge brew which now needs adjusting. If you aren’t expecting any physical printing your product, it is worth considering just sticking to US Letter.

Why does the U.S. have to be different? Well, for no reason of course!