quickbook w-2 form allignment

Hi jackrussell53,

Let's do some text adjustments to align the text on your W-2 forms.

You can adjust the printing alignment of the text and do a print test to check the result. When you do the test, you can use a blank paper to avoid wasting forms. Then, check the actual print against the form to see if the last line would printed in the correct box. For more information about printing W-2 form, see the steps in this article: Print your W-2 and W-3 forms .

Please get in touch with us again if you have other questions.

Hi BRC,

Thank you for jumping in. The article for checking the alignment also suggests checking the compatibility of Jack's printer driver. 

Hi jackrussell53,

If you've already gone through Option 3 in the article I've shared and the same thing happens, please get in touch with our phone agents to check this further.

1. Open this link: https://payroll.intuit.com/support/contact/?infosrc=qs&service=16.
2. Click Taxes.
3. Choose View Contact Info button.
   
   

Let me know if you have other questions.

Was this resolved?  I am encountering the same problem...

Same problem here.   

Thanks for joining the thread, Avocet03, PattiePRC.

Let me jump in for a moment and help make sure this gets straightened out right away.

To clarify, where did you get your W-2 forms? When printing this in QuickBooks, your forms need to be compatible with the program to ensure the alignment will print correctly.

A quick way to verify if your forms are compatible is to follow the suggestion of my colleague, JessT, which is to do a print test to check the alignment . However, if you already tried this, then I'd highly recommend you reach out to our Desktop Payroll Team. They have specialized tools and can further assist you to fix the alignment problem.

Here's how you can contact them:

1. Click this link to go to the Official Contact Us page.
2. Choose Basic, Standard & Enhanced.
3. Select Payroll, then View Contact Info.

Keep in touch with me here if there's anything else you need. I always got your back. Thanks for reaching out, wishing you and your business the best.

Same problem here.

I'm using the same forms I've always used, the same printer I've always used, and the computer I used last year for the first time, with no issues.

I have gone through the steps, but this year, it will not align.

The top is aligned, but the bottom isn't.

Hi, mwtlgray.

Thanks for joining this thread. I'm here to guide you to the right support so you can get the help you need. 

Have you tried the troubleshooting provided by JessT? If the issue still persists, I encourage you to get in touch with our QuickBooks Desktop Technical Support Team. They have additional tools to pull up your account and investigate this further. They can also create a new investigation and once it has been open, you’ll be receiving an email notification about the updates and progress.

You can contact our phone support by following the steps provided by my colleague AldrinS above.

For additional reference, you can check this article: Print your W-2 and W-3 forms.

Please let me know how it goes. If you have other concerns, you're always welcome to post here in QuickBooks Community. We're always here to help you out. 

It is infuriating that QB support is just saying "Call us" without offering a solution here. I have spent TWO HOURS this morning on this issue and still can't get it fixed.

It's the same thing as everyone else: either the top section is aligned or the bottom. There's no way to get both aligned. There needs to be a way to adjust the space in between the top and bottom form because it isn't quite right.

QB Support:  Look into this and please give us all an answer HERE.

Work-around solution I came up with:

If you have about double the pre-printed forms you need, you can try this.

Align so that the top forms are good.
 
Print all the W-2s that you need. The top ones you will keep, the bottom forms you will discard.

Deselect the first employee and reprint.

The employee forms that printed incorrectly on the first batch due to being on the bottom, will now be on top.

Discard the misprinted bottoms. Keep the tops.  Repeat for each set of forms.

Aggravating problem, but I hope this helps.

Hello User12345.

I'm here to provide help with the W-2 form alignment in QuickBooks Desktop.

We'll need to set the Adobe Acrobat Reader program as your default PDF viewer to ensure the forms will be aligned.

I'm adding an article below with the steps depending on the Operating System you have: (scroll down to Set Adobe Reader as your default program

Set Adobe Reader as your default program .

Thanks for coming to the Community. I'll keep an eye out for your response.

Work-around solution I came up with:

If you have about double the pre-printed forms you need, you can try this.

Align so that the top forms are good.
 
Print all the W-2s that you need. The top ones you will keep, the bottom forms you will discard.

Deselect the first employee and reprint.

The employee forms that printed incorrectly on the first batch due to being on the bottom, will now be on top.

Discard the misprinted bottoms. Keep the tops.  Repeat for each set of forms.

Aggravating problem, but I hope this helps.



The other solution is to just buy the blank perforated forms which is what I ended up doing because the pre-printed ones still weren't perfect.  I got those printed in about two minutes. Much easier.

Does anyone have a fix from QBs?  I purchased my forms from Costco aka harland clark and they haven't been too responsive either.  Although the work around suggested is smart, I would rather print normally since I only bought enough for our employees... I have tried the Adobe fix to no avail as well.

Thanks!

Thanks for reaching out to the Community, @Avocet03.

I appreciate the steps you’ve taken in order to fix the problem in aligning and printing W-2s. 

Since the recommended solutions provided by my colleagues didn’t resolve the issue, it’s possible that the forms you’ve purchased are not compatible with QuickBooks.

For you to file and print your employees W-2, you can use blank or perforated paper. This is advised by some of our Community backers to avoid the hassle of aligning forms. Please take a look at this article for more information: Print your W-2 and W-3 forms.

For further guidance, you may visit this link for reference: General Rules and Specifications for Substitute Forms W-2 and W-3.

That should get you pointed in the right direction. Please let me know if you have any follow-up concerns. I’ll be here to help. Take care and have a good one!

I also purchased through Costco/Harland Clarke but could not get them aligned.

So I  have printed W2's on blank paper this year.   Quickbooks does not seem to take this seriously, in my opinion.

Hey again, PattiePRC.

Thanks for adding more details where the forms were purchased and sharing your thoughts regarding the issue.

Currently, we don't have any open investigations regarding misalignment of W-2’s. However, I still suggest following the steps provided by my colleagues to resolve the alignment issue. For forms bought outside of QuickBooks, you should be able to use them as long as they align.

If you have any other concerns, feel free to leave me a comment below. I'll get back to assist you further. Have a good one.

Yes !! This works - the default .pdf was set to Microsoft Edge in one of my client’s printers.  When I followed these instructions and changed default to Adobe it works great !  I could not for the life of me figure out why they printed perfectly on my home office printer but not here. Problem solved !

Did you get any help about the alignment issue? I have the same problem.

Thank you for replying. I will try this and see if this works for me as well.

This worked!!!  Changed to Adobe and re-set the alignment back to default and it worked.  Thanks.

Hello @ljkentucky and @OliviaHrdz.

Thank you for getting back to us. I'm glad that the issue with your  W-2 alignment has been resolved. 

Please know that I'm only a few clicks away if you need anything else. Cheering you to a great rest of your week. 

I called the support center and someone was able to help me work around the problem.

It had to do with the program my computer was using to print pdfs.

Download Adobe 11, then went to process my w2's.

Print the documents to your computer using Microsoft XPS document writer, which will allow you to save it as a pdf file, but as you are saving it change the type of file from OpenXPSdoc(.oxps) to XPSdoc(.xps).

Then open that document up on your computer and print it on a blank sheet of paper, hold it in front of the blank W2 form and see if it lines up.

This worked for us.

Hi, @mwtgray.

Thank you for sharing the steps you've performed to get this working. I'm glad our phone support was able to help you align your W-2 forms.

Should you need anything else, don't hesitate to let me know. I'm always here to help. Take care and have a great day!

Quickbooks support is no help at all - their solution is that I have to purchase Intuit's preprinted Red copies of Form W-2 otherwise there is no known solution other than purchasing Intuit's Red Form W-2s.  BUT was told that there is no guarantee that this will work either so would have paid $185 for nothing as the forms are NOT returnable.

In prior versions of QBs you could align the bottom copy separately which always worked beautifully.  This option is now taken away as everything goes to pdf format to print and changing the alignment is near impossible.

Frustrating to say the least as I have used QBs payroll for nearly 20 yrs now.....