How to make an A4 presentation with Beamer?

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

I live in the US, so all my computer's defaults are set to the US,
including paper size. I have a customer in Europe for whom I need to
make a presentation, using Beamer (alone, not with LyX), printable on A4
paper.

I've tried various combinations and variants of the following :

\usepackage{geometry}
\special{papersize 29.7cm, 21cm}
\hsize 29.7cm
\vsize 21.0cm
\usepackage[a4paper, total={29.5cm, 20.8cm}]{geometry}
\geometry{letterpaper, landscape, total={11.5in, 8in}}

Some forced the latex program to abort with error, some caused only a
tiny rendering of the slide on a big A4 paper, some caused the printing
to be portrait, when I could print landscape it printed upside down,
what a mess.

Does anyone have a way to use Beamer (not LyX/Beamer) to create a PDF
that can print correctly on a European printer?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive