Print PDF documents in landscape using browser (Edge, Chrome, FireFox)

Symptoms

You open a PDF document in the browser where all pages are landscape or a combination of portrait and landscape. When printing this PDF document from the embedded PDF viewer or browser-plugin to a (virtual) printer (e.g. Print&Share) all the documents are printed as portrait.

Cause

It seems that every browser using the embedded PDF viewer or browser-plugin, prints the pages as portrait and ignores landscape settings. This is especially visible when printing documents with mixed page orientations (landscape and portrait).

(2022/03/15: FireFox, Edge, Chrome tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11.)

Resolution

Solution 1:

Instead of opening the browser in browser and printing from within the PDF viewer in the browser, download the file first and print from a desktop PDF viewer application (e.g. Foxit Reader, Acrobat Reader,..).

Edge

  1. Open Microsoft Edge and navigate to edge://settings/content/pdfDocuments
  2. Enable Always Download PDF Files.

Extra: open PDF file after download

  1. In Windows set the default application to open PDF files to Foxit Reader or Acrobat Reader.
  2. Open Edge and download a PDF file.
  3. Press CTRL+J to see your download history.
  4. Right-click on the PDF file in the download list in Edge and select Always open with system viewer.

Chrome

  1. Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments
  2. Enable Download PDF files instead of automatically opening them in Chrome.

Extra: open PDF file after download

  1. In Windows set the default application to open PDF files to Foxit Reader or Acrobat Reader.
  2. Open Chrome and download a PDF file.
  3. Click the small arrow ^ next to the downloaded file at the bottom and select Always open with system viewer.

FireFox

  1. Open FireFox and navigate to about:preferences#general
  2. Scroll to the Applications-section and in the input box Search file types or applications search for pdf.
  3. Change the option Portable Document Format (PDF) (application/pdf) and Portable Document Format (PDF) (application/x-download) to Safe File instead of Open in Firefox.