Word 2003 should not "crash" in the case of losing connection toprinter

E

elbot

Referring back to Beth Melton's reply back on 10/10/2003 regarding "Word
Crashes when off the network".

She stated:
"To provide some insight on why there isn't a patch and it will always
be an issue if you are not connected to the network: Word needs
information from the printer driver in order to function correctly and
provide you with a true WYSIWYG environment."

Weak argument! Among all the grand features that Word has, it provides
fundamental word processor function, which means the minimum requirement
SHOULD NOT require connection to a printer. "WYSIWYG" has nothing to do
with whether it has connection to a printer or not. If your arguement
stands, MS assumes users 100% connected to a printer? I am sure MS Word
also targets a large number of mobile customers. Do you expect, by
default, them to have a live connection to a printer, say , on an
airplane too? The design as how to deal with printer connection outage
is to provide "warning" ONLY, not to hang the application!!! This is a
software bug and should be patched.

She stated that she did not understand why it is inconvenient.
As far as inconvenience! Switching between the two printer drivers, the
real one vs the fake one, involves inconvenience, of course! That means,
when I am on the road working, the first thing I must do when I use Word
is to switch printer driver. And, I have to do it within a matter of
approx. 10 seconds; otherwise, it crashes. When I get back to my office
building, I have to remind myself to switch back. Well, it seems to be
a slight inconvenience... but it is a big pain in the xxx for a person
who already has to work minimum 60 hours a week, and have to multitask.

She stated:
"The 'fix' in Word 2003 is Word will no longer crash and a better error
message is provided. However Word will still not start if a printer
driver can not be found."

Wrong! I have Word 2003, and it crashes if there is no live connection
to my printer. I have to create a fake image print file as the target
printer and do a "quick" switch when I open the Word in order to avoid
the crashing situation.
 
R

RWN

I don't profess to being an expert but I believe what she was saying was
that you should have a driver on your machine vs. pointing at a driver
on the network.
Word is looking for information from the driver and if none is present,
"Boom".
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

As Rob says, it's merely a matter of having the printer driver installed
locally. As long as Word can find the *driver,* it doesn't care (or know)
whether you have a printer connected to the computer or not.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
R

RWN

Suzanne;
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't matter which driver is installed
either, right?
As long as Word has *something* to "connect" with.
I'm thinking in terms of using Word away from the network (laptop or at
home, for ex.).
--
Regards;
Rob
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suzanne S. Barnhill said:
As Rob says, it's merely a matter of having the printer driver installed
locally. As long as Word can find the *driver,* it doesn't care (or know)
whether you have a printer connected to the computer or not.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
Click to expand...
 
M

Mike Williams [MVP]

RWN said:
Suzanne;
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't matter which driver is
installed either, right?
Click to expand...

No it doesn't but if you care about sceen/page layout then you probably want
something close to the device you will eventually print to.
 
R

RWN

Right, I was attempting to stave off another diatribe about not having
the correct driver when "on the road".
i.e. I was trying to be subtle:)

Thanks.
 
E

elbot

In this age of mobile technology, especially for someone who works in a
large corporation with an established network, most connect to a
"network" printer through a network print server.

It does not matter how we have our driver installed, the key is MS Word
should not just crash... in the event of failing in searching driver to
a network printer, it should :
1) provide proper error message
2) should not crash, it should inform the user and ask if he/she wishes
to change printer driver or create a fake image print file locally.

again, this is NOT fixed in Word2003 as it was said earlier.

Sorry, I was pretty frustrated last night because it happened when I was
on the road and trying to just make a couple of small quick changes to
my technical spec in the airport before I could send it to the office
through ... guess what "my cell phone"!
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Word does not know how to format your document unless it has *some* printer
driver to refer to. Even if you have to set it to Generic/Text Only, you
have to have some local printer driver selected. Even though you will be
printing to a network printer, you can still install the driver for that
printer on your laptop, and I would strongly advise you to do so before you
go on the road again. Never mind what Word *should* be capable of; this is
the way it works now, and you will defy it to your peril (and continuing
frustration).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
R

RWN

I too am "..someone who works in a large corporation with an established
network"
and "...connect to a "network" printer through a network print server."

As far as it not mattering "...how we have our driver installed";
IMHO I would tend to disagree. In my own experience things are a lot
less trouble free if you have the driver installed locally. If the
server has problems-maybe yours doesn't-you are in trouble (read as
"crash").
Problems can also occur when the user attempts to change settings (Tray
selection etc.).

I do not profess to being an expert in these matters and can only offer
what my experiences have been.

I do, however, agree (wholeheartedly) that providing a message would be
more preferable than having Word go "Boom".
 
J

Judith L. Osborn

elbot said:
In this age of mobile technology, especially for someone who works in a
large corporation with an established network, most connect to a
"network" printer through a network print server.

It does not matter how we have our driver installed, the key is MS Word
should not just crash... in the event of failing in searching driver to
a network printer, it should :
1) provide proper error message
2) should not crash, it should inform the user and ask if he/she wishes
to change printer driver or create a fake image print file locally.

again, this is NOT fixed in Word2003 as it was said earlier.

Sorry, I was pretty frustrated last night because it happened when I was
on the road and trying to just make a couple of small quick changes to
my technical spec in the airport before I could send it to the office
through ... guess what "my cell phone"!
Click to expand...
But you have several options:

- In later versions of Windows, set the printer to be available "offline"
- Install the driver locally (for LPT1:) and use NET USE to redirect it
to the network when you are in the office
- Install both a local & network driver and just remember to pick the
local one when you are not connected to the office ... or even have
someone in your office write a batch file to set it up for you to choose
the local one when you're not connected.

FWIW, all the major word processing programs work the same way; the
program has no way to know what the page layout will be if there is no
printer installed.

It's not really about "WYSIWYG" but about page layout which,as you
might've noticed, changes from printer to printer (unless you
specifically select an option to disable that.)

-- DE
 
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