Setting up a print file in Canva or Microsoft Word

Create a design → Custom size → switch the unit to millimetres and enter the “make your canvas” figure from the table, not the finished size. Everything meant to reach the trimmed edge — a background colour, a full-bleed photo — has to run to the edge of that canvas, and everything that matters (text, a logo, a phone number) stays at least 7mm in from it, which is the 3mm bleed plus the 4mm safe area combined.

When you export, look for a setting that says PDF Print rather than PDF Standard, and for an option to include crop marks and bleed — leave that switched off, because your canvas already is the bleed size, and adding a second bleed on export shifts the trim to the wrong place. The full Canva walkthrough, with the same steps in order and what each one looks like in the interface, is on the free templates page — this page exists to get the canvas size right before you get there.

Design tools built for screens generally work in RGB, the colour space a monitor uses, rather than CMYK, the four inks a press mixes. Most export a usable print PDF regardless, but very bright or very dark colours can shift slightly between screen and press whichever tool you use — not a Canva-specific problem, and not one this page can promise away. If exact colour matching matters — a brand colour, a logo — say so on the order and we will flag anything that will not hold.

Set the page to the bleed size. Layout → Size → More Paper Sizes, and type the “make your canvas” millimetres from the table into Width and Height — Word’s page-size dialog accepts millimetres directly if your regional settings are set to Australia; otherwise change the measurement unit first under File → Options → Advanced. There is no bleed field anywhere in Word to look for; the page size is doing that job instead.

Set every margin to zero under Layout → Margins → Custom Margins, then place a full-width, full-height picture or coloured shape as the background if anything needs to run to the edge. Word actively resists content sitting outside its margins, which is the opposite of what a bleed needs, so zero margins is not optional here the way it might be in Canva.

Keep text and logos 7mm inside the page edge — the same figure as Canva, for the same reason: 3mm of bleed plus 4mm of safe area. Word has no guide layer to show you where that is, so measure it once with a text box positioned by exact coordinates, or work from a printed ruler.

Export as PDF, not .docx. File → Save As → PDF, and use the “Standard” quality option rather than “Minimum size”, which compresses images. .docx is a document format that can reflow depending on the fonts installed on whatever machine opens it next; a PDF is fixed, which is what a press needs and a printer can check.

The honest limitation. Word was built for documents, not print production, and it shows most in three places: it has no independent colour management, so what you see on screen is a rougher guide to the printed result than design software gives you; photos placed at anything less than full resolution can print visibly soft, because Word compresses images on paste more aggressively than a design tool does; and there is no way to preview the trim line before you export, so a first proof is genuinely the first time you see where the cut lands. None of that means Word cannot be used — a text-heavy flyer or a simple sign works fine — but a design with photography or exact colour is better built in Canva, which at least shows the canvas at true size while you work.