When you need to get numbers out of gas quickly, onto paper or into a PDF file, for example for a meeting or to email a colleague, you can print the page you currently have open. gas prepares it for printing on its own: it narrows the content to the width of the sheet, recalculates the graph and hides everything that does not belong on paper. The result is a picture of what you see on the screen right now.
For a regular document for a client or for management there is something else, a generated report. The difference is described in the section How printing differs from a report.
Before you start
- gas prepares printing on pages that have a button with a printer icon: on the detail of a post, story, video or pin, on a campaign detail, on a goal detail, on the tourism pages and with all tables.
- Print buttons are shown only on a computer and only when the browser window is wide enough. You will not see them on a phone or a tablet.
- Wait for the data to load before printing. While the page is still loading, the print button is not shown.
- You do not have to print on paper. In the browser print dialog you can choose saving as PDF as the destination.
How to do it
Printing a detail, a campaign, a goal or a tourism page
- Open the page and wait until both the numbers and the graph have loaded.
- In the page header, next to the Refresh button, click the button with the printer icon. When you hover over it, the tooltip Print appears. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+P does the same, on Apple computers Cmd+P.
- The Print window opens with the message Preparing data for print. At that moment gas is recalculating the graph to the dimensions of the printed page and waiting for the data loading to finish. The window has a single button, Cancel, which interrupts the preparation.
- As soon as everything is ready, the window closes by itself and the browser print dialog opens.
- In the dialog select a printer, or choose saving as PDF as the destination, and confirm printing.
Printing a table
With tables we also ask what exactly should be printed.
- First set the table up the way you want it on paper: set the filters, the sorting and the visible columns. Printing is based on the current view.
- Above the table on the right, click the button with the printer icon (tooltip Print). The Export CSV and Export Excel buttons are in the same group. The Ctrl+P shortcut, or Cmd+P, works here as well.
- The Print window opens with options. All columns also adds columns that are hidden in your view to the printout. Show full text and wrap lines makes sure long texts in cells are not shortened, the line wraps and grows taller instead. The All rows option is not available for printing, the reason is in the section Common problems.
- Click Print.
- The Preparing data for print window appears and waits until the whole table is rendered. Then the browser print dialog opens.
Saving as PDF
The PDF file is not created by gas but by the browser. In its print dialog, choose saving to a file instead of a printer: in Chrome and Edge that is the Save as PDF option in the Destination field, in Safari the PDF menu in the bottom left corner of the dialog. The naming differs depending on the browser and its version. The resulting document looks exactly as it would on paper.
What is included in the printout and what is not
The content of the page is printed: the heading, the cards with numbers, the graph, tables and texts. When printing, the graph is also given values right at the individual points so the numbers can be read on paper too. After printing, the values at the points are hidden again.
Nothing that serves for control is printed: the left menu, the top bar, buttons, drop-down menus, the filters above the table, the period switch or the profile switch.
Because the period switch and the profile switch are not printed, the printout may not show which period and which profile the numbers are for. When you pass the output on, add this information manually, or use a report instead of printing, which states the period and the included profiles by itself.
Post previews behave according to where they come from:
- Image previews, that is an Instagram post, a story or a video thumbnail, print normally.
- An embedded player from Facebook, Pinterest or TikTok does not make it into the printout. Browsers do not render embedded content reliably when printing, so the whole card with the preview is left out of the printout instead of leaving an empty frame on paper.
- For a YouTube video, a static video thumbnail is printed instead of the player. The condition is that you have the Embedded content from social networks consent enabled in Settings → User profile → Privacy and your data. Without this consent the preview is not shown on the screen or in the printout.
For a campaign detail there is one more thing: the content of all campaign tabs makes it into the printout, not just the one you have open. That is why preparing the print takes longer with campaigns than elsewhere.
Dark mode is not carried over to paper. The printout is always black text on a white background, even if you have dark display enabled in the application.
What happens next
After you confirm in the print dialog, the page is printed, or a PDF file is saved where the browser saves downloaded files. gas returns to the normal view right away: the graph stretches back to its original width, the values at the points disappear and the table returns to paging and to its original columns.
Printing is a one-off action. No file or record is left in the application afterwards, so if you want to archive the output, save it as PDF yourself.
How printing differs from a report
Printing a page and a report solve two different needs. Printing is a quick picture of what is on the screen right now. A report is a standalone document that gas puts together according to your settings.
| Printing a page | Report | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | an instant picture of one screen | a standalone PDF document put together by the application |
| Who starts it | you, by clicking the printer | you manually, or it is created by itself on a schedule |
| Content | one page exactly as you see it | selected sections for a selected period and selected profiles |
| Appearance | the application layout without controls | title page, customer account logo, consistent formatting |
| Distribution | none, you send the file yourself | by email to recipients and delivery in the application |
| History | none | an archive with older runs to download |
A report can be generated repeatedly, typically weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, and sent to recipients without any action from you. The logo that appears in reports is uploaded in Settings → Customer account → Print settings. You will find the details in the articles about reports, start with what reports are for.
Do you only need one graph, not the whole page? At the top of the graph card there is an Export button with the options PDF file, PNG image and others. The graph is saved separately and you do not have to deal with the layout of the whole page.
Common problems
I cannot see the printer button on the page
Most often the browser window is too narrow. Print and export buttons are only shown from a certain window width, so it helps to maximise the window or to reduce the page zoom with the Ctrl and minus keys. The second reason is usually that the page is still loading data. The third option is that the page in question does not prepare printing, for example Overview has no such button.
Printing started before the data had loaded
On pages with a printer button, gas waits for the print by itself, but only when the data is already loaded. If you press the Ctrl+P shortcut earlier, the preparation does not start and the browser prints an unfinished page with empty spaces instead of content. Close the print dialog, wait until the page has fully loaded and start printing again. The same applies to pages without a printer button, the browser prints those straight away in the state they are in.
The Preparing data for print window does not close
The preparation waits for the data loading to finish. With campaigns, all tabs are loaded, and with large tables the whole content, so the wait can take tens of seconds. If the window does not close even after a while, click Cancel, load the page again (the F5 key) and start printing only once the data is on the screen. Leaving for another page also cancels the print preparation.
The graph or the table is split across two pages
gas tries not to split cards and table rows, but with tall content the browser decides where to break. In its print dialog, switch the orientation to landscape, or reduce the scale, for example to 80 percent. With a table it helps to turn off the Show full text and wrap lines option, the rows will then be lower, and to hide the columns you do not need before printing. The graph itself can also be obtained outside printing, using the Export button on the graph card.
The post preview is missing from the printout
With Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok this is intentional: their preview is an embedded player and that is not rendered when printing, so the card with the preview is left out completely. With YouTube a static thumbnail is printed, but only with the Embedded content from social networks consent in Settings → User profile → Privacy and your data. If you have not granted the consent, enable it and load the page again.
Only one page of rows was printed from the table
Tables are paged and the page you currently have open is printed. The All rows option is intentionally unavailable for printing, because rendering all rows at once would put a strain on your computer with large tables. You have two options:
- In the table footer increase the Page size (you can choose 15, 30, 60, 120 and 240 rows) and print the table in parts.
- Or use Export CSV or Export Excel for complete data, there you can download all rows at once.
Columns I have hidden in the table are missing from the printout
In the Print window tick All columns. Without this tick, exactly what is visible on the screen is printed.
Long texts in cells are cut off
In the Print window tick Show full text and wrap lines. The text will then wrap into several lines and the table rows will grow taller accordingly.
Coloured backgrounds and shades were not printed
By default browsers do not print coloured backgrounds, to save ink. In the print dialog expand the further settings and enable printing of background graphics. This does not concern text and graphs, those are always printed.
There is a date and a page address at the top or bottom of the paper
This header and footer are added by the browser, not by gas. They can be turned off in the further settings of the print dialog.
The page cannot be printed on a phone
The print button is not shown on a phone or a tablet. Tables are also displayed as cards on a small screen, so even printing through the browser would give a different result than a table on a computer. Print the page from a computer, or have a report sent to you.
I need a document with a logo that the client will receive
Printing a page has no logo and no title page. For a document that goes to a client, use a report. It can do a title page, the customer account logo, selected sections and sending by email, and it can be set up to generate itself at a regular interval.
If you are not sure what to do about printing, write to us through the contact form.