PRINTING WOES

[dadweiss]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC

In one of our computer labs here at Utah State University, where we have 56 PC's and about 30+ Macs, the following bug report was posted by our manager.

"Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Mac - Microsoft Word Printing Problems
Just be aware (Mark mentioned this in an earlier post, I believe). Every now and again, somebody will print something from Word on the Mac, and the printer will start spewing tons of pages of garbage characters.

1) Pull the paper tray on the printer. Then turn off the printer.
2) Check which Mac is printing and cancel the print.
3) Restart the computer. Whoever was printing will lose their file. Word has crashed, and no matter what you do, you'll just get dialog box after dialog box of complaints from Word. You can take a picture of the screen and save the file to the work HD. (Command+Shift+3 will put a screenshot on the desktop) That way, they'll not loose everything - but it's only a picture, not text anymore.

We need to tell people using the Macs to be sure to save their file just prior to printing from Word. Then if things crash they must not try to save again - that will just corrupt their file. Let's be sure that the lab person goes through the Mac lab frequently and inform people.

I've updated Office 2008 this morning with the newest update. Hopefully that will fix the problem. Please let me know if this problem occurs again.

The best fix is to always save a file to a thumb drive separately before printing, so you can go back to that when the corruption occurs. What a pain.
+++++++++++++++++++

 

[CyberTaz]

It sounds like what may need updating is the printer driver. If that hasn't
been looked into it might not be a bad idea to check the mfr's site & make
sure all Macs get updated. Even if there's no update, drivers do corrupt, so
try reinstalling a "clean" copy of the most recent update on at least one
system known to have had the problem & see if things improve.

Another couple of tests are to print to a different printer and try printing
the same files using other software (such as Text Edit or Pages).

Another possibility is that the OS X is in need of an update as well or that
the automatic Software Update version is being used. Try the Apple Downloads
site for the appropriate Combo update & repair permissions on at least 1 or
2 systems to see whether that makes a difference.

It's least likely that the Office software is at fault because the programs
don't do the printing - they simply call the OS print services which in turn
hands the job to the driver which passes the data to the printer.

Reply with details of you results.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac