13 Things to NEVER Do When You Print Your Own Forms

by Chelsea Camper | Last Updated December 30, 2015

If you’ve been hanging around our blog for a while you probably already know how to print your own, what you should do, how you should do it, etc. But! Do you know about all of the things you shouldn’t do?

Here’s a list of 13 thing NOT to do when printing your own forms. Print this out, bookmark this post, or whatever you have to do so that you don’t accidentally fall into one of these Don’ts!

1. Use inkjet paper in laser printer

No, no, no, no! Inkjet paper has a special coating on it that can melt in a laser printer and do all sorts of damage. We wrote an entire post on why you shouldn’t use inkjet paper in a laser printer.

2. Use laser paper in inkjet printer

This is also a big Don’t Do It, but the repercussions aren’t quite as bad as using inkjet paper in a laser printer. Still, you should make sure you use inkjet paper in inkjet printers and laser paper in laser printers. We wrote a blog post about why you shouldn’t use laser paper in an inkjet printer too.

3. Start print job without doing a test print

You always want to do a test print before starting your big job. If you don’t do a test print, how can you make sure you’ve loaded the paper correctly? Or how do you know if everything is perfectly lined up?

Do a test print before starting any large print jobs to make sure everything is just right before hitting the print button on the Big Job.

4. Start print job without someone else looking it over

Similar to Don’t Do number 3, you want to have someone else take a look at a finished test print. This way a second pair of fresh eyes can (hopefully) pick out any spelling or grammatical errors in your copy.

Don’t limit yourself to just one person. One person looking it over is the minimum, but try to get two or three people to take a look at it before you start the big print job.

5. Store your paper stock in high humidity areas

High humidity can cause paper to curl and warp, making it hard, if not impossible, to print on. However! All is not lost! Most of the time you can save your paper even if it is curling up due to humidity.

The first thing to do is to get it in an area with the appropriate humidity (differs per paper type) and then set something heavy on top of it to force it flat again. We have a post that goes into paper and humidity in a little more depth: Hurricane Sandy & Your Paper Stock

6. Eat Cheetos while handling your paper

I don’t care how carefully you can eat a bag of Cheetos, you shouldn’t do it while handling your nice, clean, specialty paper. You don’t want to be sending out mailers, brochures, or shipping labels with little orange finger prints all over them. It makes your company look unprofessional…unless your company is called “Little Orange Finger Prints” and your customers don’t mind touching your grubby finger prints.

As a side note, also don’t leave pens with the cap off near the blank paper. You can’t erase pen ink!

7. Bundle your mailers with rubber bands

Bundling your mailers with rubber bands can cause them to become dented, maybe even permanently. Try to keep all of your mailers flat and in tact by using elastic loops to bundle your mailers instead of rubber bands.

8. Completely ignore the Low Ink warning

True, you shouldn’t replace your ink cartridge as soon as your computer tells you to since you can usually squeeze out 50-100 more prints out of it, but you also shouldn’t ignore it.

Let’s say you’re printing 1,000 mailers. Your low ink light comes on after about 100 prints, but you tell your printer to ignore it since everything is still printing well. With everything running smoothly you go back to your desk and every time that little ink error pops up you immediately ignore it until your print job is done. …When you go to pick up your print job from the printer you find that over half of them are printed with a color missing. Now you have to go back to reprint a bunch of mailers!

If you ink is low, you can keep printing, but make sure you keep an eye on how the prints are coming out. If it looks like its printing with some of the colors missing you know you need to replace the ink cartridge right then and there!

9. Use Comic Sans

Comic Sans is one of the most over used and improperly used fonts out there. People use it on everything from law firm signs to college psychology exams. Comic Sans belongs in neither of those places. There are plenty of free script fonts out on the internet that are less used and more respected than Comic Sans (check out dafont.com for some free fonts).

10. Put tape over a shipping label bar code

If you’re printing your own shipping labels, you should never have to tape the shipping label onto a box. You should be printing your shipping label onto a label sheet so that you can simply peel and place the label onto the package.

11. Not taking the time to get to know your printer

Do you know the strengths and weaknesses of your printer? Do you know whether it’s an inkjet or a laser printer? Does it print better photographs than the other printers you can use?

Knowing your printer can help you excel with printing your own. You can decide which printer to print which job on based on what each printer is good at. Print your full color photograph postcards on your photo printer while printing shipping labels on your laser printer and letters to your customers out on your regular office printer.

12. Let your paper stock sit on the ground

This goes along with point 5. If you have your paper sitting on the ground it can be effected by the moisture in the ground. Try to keep the paper off the ground, even if it’s just on the pallet it arrived on. The higher off the ground you can keep your paper, the better.

13. Give Up

Never give up on printing your own forms! You have plenty of tools just from this blog and our website to help you with printing your own.

You can do it!

Everyone runs into problems every now and then. Just take a deep breath, relax, and try a different approach. (:

What other things should you never do when printing your own?

Are you new to printing your own forms? Check out our Getting Started Guide for information on what you should do and what you can do when printing your own forms!