Print Preview in Pro

[MichaelVolz]

I would like the ability to preview a print in Pro before sending it to a printer/plotter.

[KoryKramer]

Hi everyone,

We are interested in gathering specific details and use cases around this request to ensure we fully understand problems encountered by not having a print preview option, as well as to inform design decisions.

If you could please share with us details about problems caused by not having print preview in Pro, that would be helpful. Provide as much detail as possible about your workflow. Since this is often a comparison against an ArcMap workflow, it will be extremely helpful to describe what works well in ArcMap along with screenshots of what you see and what elements of the UI work well for you, along with things that you feel could be improved.

Screenshots and specific details will be very helpful. Thank you in advance for taking your time to work with us on this. If you prefer to not comment publicly, feel free to private message me here on the Community or email kkramer@esri.com.

Thank you in advance for any additional specifics that you can provide. We appreciate your time and feedback on this idea.

[wayfaringrob]

@KoryKramerNot ArcMap, but this software came with our plotter and I find it really nice to use. Obviously I have the wrong paper loaded for this print - but it makes it very clear that I do, and even shows me what it would look like if I went ahead and printed with the current settings in a way that's very easy to understand. Maybe something this detailed (with all the driver settings, etc) wouldn't be possible in Pro, but the way this presents the print preview alongside the basic size and scaling settings is nice. Our old plotter didn't have anything like this though, and we did rely on hoping for the best.

This thing in ArcMap was also useful for plots and standard prints:

[KoryKramer]

Thanks for the input, Robert, and for sharing an image of what you find to be a helpful design. Do the different tiling views that Pro offers help (these are similar to the screenshot you shared from ArcMap)?

Actual:

Fit to paper size:

Tile oversized:

[wayfaringrob]

Hmmm, you know, I hadn't noticed that. I don't often tile, so maybe I was ignoring the "tiling" section thinking it was something different? I do admit I don't use that pane that often, I typically export to PDF in Pro anyway because we like to save/share a digital copy and it does serve as a good "print preview."

[KoryKramer]

For those following this thread, we haven't received much response from the request above. To those who have reached out to me directly, THANK YOU!

Another thing (in addition to using the Tiling Preview shown above) that is relevant to this conversation is to ask whether you are using the option to display printer margins on your layouts. Displaying printer margins in Pro was made available after this idea was posted, so we're trying to gauge, given the current functionality of the Tiling preview + printer margins, what are the remaining gaps that an "ArcMap-like" print preview would solve.

Please share your thoughts as comments, or contact me directly at kkramer@esri.com

Thanks

[KoryKramer]

This Idea has been implemented in ArcGIS Pro 3.2. Specifically, the ability to toggle printer margins on/off, while possible in previous releases of Pro, was added to the Print pane to make previewing the margins more discoverable and easier to work with. We also added the ability to display the tiling lines and numbered pages on the layout page itself. See https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/sharing/overview/print-a-map-or-layout.htm 

Please see the What's New documentation for more new features in Pro 3.2.

The Your Ideas in ArcGIS Pro 3.2 blog and video have been posted to the Esri Community blog. You can take a look at these to see your idea and all others that were implemented in this release of ArcGIS Pro.