Excel 2003 - 'No Printers Installed'

[pssdscr76]

I am trying to print a spreadsheet in Excel 2003 using my Vista PC. I am able
to print from Word and Firefox and print test pages without any problems.
When I select Print, Print Preview or Page Setup I get a message saying that
no printers are installed. The message then provides instructions for
installing a printer using Windows 2000 or XP. There is also a button to
press for additional help. This brings up some additional information about
designating a default printer and troubleshooting printing issues in Windows.
I have not tried to print anything in Excel recently so I can not pinpoint
the start of this issue to any particular change. Just to be sure it was not
something easily corrected, I went into the Printer folder and right clicked
on my printer and selected the option to make it the default printer. I did
not notice any particular change to the icon for the printer and no marking
on the icon indicating it is the default. I then used this as an excuse to go
ahead and switch over to a recently purchased printer. After going through
the installation of the printer, I tried to print in Excel again and I got
the same error. I tried making the new printer the default again and still
nothing changed.
Anyone have any idea what is going on?

 

[Shane Devenshire]

Try this in Vista:

Choose Start, Control Panel, Printers, right-click the printer you want to
use and choose Set as default printer.

In Excel choose File, Print and see if the default printer is picked in the
Name box.

 

[pssdscr76]

I have attempted on several occasions to set the printer as the default using
this method, but as far as I can tell it has no effect. I remember in XP that
the default printer's icon got a little check mark in one corner. Is that
still supposed to be the case? If so, it is not happening for some reason.
This may be the cause of the problem, but Excel is the only application that
does not even allow me to select a printer to use even if one is not set as
the default.
Another related symptom is that both Firefox and IE both default to the fax
version of the printer (in this case 'HP Officejet 6300 series fax') even
after succesfully printing something using 'HP Officejet 6300 series' as the
selected printer.
I may have to get with HP support on this, but I figured I would try to get
an answer here first since it is only Excel that will not allow anything to
print without a printer selected as the default.