My Printer Woes- An Update

So, my printer saga continues.  (The beginning part of my saga is here.)

I downloaded Adobe Acrobat's free trial.  Boy is that thing fun to work with!  (I apologize in advance to those of you who probably use A.A. all the time and are probably reading this with a slightly amused expression on your face.  I'm relatively new to this, so it was a novel experience.)  I was doing all kinds of things to my pdf file of classroom decor printables; adding, deleting, editing pages, changing colors and font sizes.  I was having way too much fun.

After I was pleased as punch with myself for getting it down to a very customized, nice neat file that contained everything I needed, and ONLY what I needed, I went to email it to Staples and realized it was 99 pages.  If I added just one more page I could get a slightly larger discount.  So I did.

Went to email it again.  Whoops!  It said my file exceeded the limit, even though it was less than half of what I started with.

Well, I said.  I have Adobe Acrobat now.  I will just split the files.

Four files later I began uploading each to a separate email.

Four HOURS later, one file was rejected, still being too big.  So I split it again...part 2a and 2b.  I don't even want to tell you how many versions of this one product I have saved on my computer by now.

 Today, when I checked my email and saw that one had bounced back for an "error," I called Staples.  After being on hold, the guy who answered the phone said, "Well I see the emails here but they aren't printed.  But there's nothing keeping me from printing them now."  (Okay, well print them now please?)  Then he said, "Oh, it's 59 cents a page.  Is that okay?"  No, it certainly was not.  This was comparable to my local print shop of 65 cents per page. When I asked why it was not the advertised website price, he said, "Well you can upload them to the website for that price, you know."

Sigh.  I told him to cancel the order.  I went back on the website (which was the initial very first thing I had tried, by the way) thinking that now since I had my smaller files, it would be easier to upload them.

Well, the Staples website won't take my files.  There are "errors."

I have ended up uploading all 100+ pages to my quick and friendly local print shop.  It took the entire single file in one piece in about five minutes.  They are quick, (albeit slightly pricey) helpful, not crowded, and I know they will be done and ready for me to pick up by tomorrow morning.

I felt better after I priced out some mainstream published classroom decor that I liked on Amazon.  When it is all said and done, minus my effort, the cost of the file, Adobe subscription, printing, and laminating will be slightly cheaper than the same premade pieces I liked (calendar, schedule cards, etc.)  And I'm pretty sure they will be sturdier.  And everything will be customized exactly how I want it.

Let's just hope my bank account will catch up at some point.  Oh yeah, and I'm out of internet data now.

T-3 days until I'm officially back in the classroom!