Printing Word Documents

[Martin Sachs]

For the past few weeks, Word 2002 has been failing almost every time I try to
print a Word document. I initiate the printout. I then get the Windows
message that Word has to close and send the error information to Microsoft.
It then attempts to recover the document. Since I saved the document before
printing it, I do not believe that the document was actually damaged and I do
not let Word do its recovery. I have no clue as to why this is happening. It
has happened with at least two templates: one that I created and have been
using for years and one of the Word default templates. I have had this system
for nearly 3 years and this problem is new in the past few weeks. Can someone
either tell me what I am doing wrong or report this to Microsoft.

 

[Bob I]

You may want to reinstall the printer driver. It sound like you have
something that got changed on your system.

 

[Martin Sachs]

Thanks, Bob I.

Before I go through the hassle of reinstalling the printer driver, I should
mention that the only program that I have trouble printing with is Microsoft
Word.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[Bob I]

You could try Help, Detect and repair. (But I lean toward the printer
not being seen properly by Word)

 

[Martin Sachs]

Thanks again. I will try help, detect, and repair.

I think I said that only Word has problems, which again makes me leery of a
reinstall of the printer driver (never a trivial operation). I should have
also mentioned that sometimes Word can print though more often, not. I am
trying to pin down the pattern and see if any possible work-arounds behave
consistently.

I should also note that I am using Office/XP, Word 2002 in case that
triggers any thoughts. This system has been working properly (well, as
properly as any Windows system works) for just short of 3 years before this
particular problem began.

 

[Martin Sachs]

Everything is printing flawlessly except Word. I have started bypassing the
problem by generating a PDF with PDFWriter and then printing the PDF. A bit
clumsy but it works. Acrobat has never had problems printing.

Reinstalling the printer software doesn't make sense when Word is the only
program having problems. Reinstall is never a quick fix and sometimes isn't a
fix at all.

Does anyone have other suggestions?

Martin Sachs

 

[Martin Sachs]

Here's more information. As I mentioned before, I tried generationg a PDF
with PDFWriter and there are no problems. Today I tried printing from Word to
Acrobat Distiller. I get the same kind of error conditon as when I print from
Word to a real printer. That tells me that reinstalling my physical printer
driver is not going to solve the problem. The only element common to both
Distiller and the real printer is Word itself. The problem printing from Word
occurred with two documents, each with a different template. One of them is
Word's default template.

I noticed several other posts about what is apparently the same problem and
other printing problems with Word. No successful solutions have been
presented to those posts. Isn't there someone out there with other
suggestions?