Blank pages printing - Word 2008

[Bozeman]

Hello all

Running Leopard 10.5.1 on 2.2Ghz Macbook.
Recently installed a purchased Office 2008 Home / Student Edition.

For some reason, all word documents, whether authored on other machines & word versions or new documents created by me, are printing blank.

The correct number of pages print out, have cut & pasted into new docs, have made certain that docs are created in the latest version, so on

Have cleared all older versions.

Have un-installed with both Remove Office and with AppZapper and then re-installed from original purchased disc.

Any ideas?

 

[John McGhie]

This is going to be difficult

This could be the printer driver, the "print what" setting, or the Font.

Open one of those documents and go to File>Print Preview. Tell me what you
see and that will give me a clue.

Make sure you have the latest printer driver from your printer manufacturer.

Of course, you have tried printing from another application?

Cheers

Hello all

Running Leopard 10.5.1 on 2.2Ghz Macbook.
Recently installed a purchased Office 2008 Home / Student Edition.

For some reason, all word documents, whether authored on other machines & word
versions or new documents created by me, are printing blank.

The correct number of pages print out, have cut & pasted into new docs, have
made certain that docs are created in the latest version, so on

Have cleared all older versions.

Have un-installed with both Remove Office and with AppZapper and then
re-installed from original purchased disc.

Any ideas?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Bozeman]

Hey John

The other apps in Office 08 are printing just fine: Excel, Powerpoint, etc.

Other, non-Office apps print without issue.

Oddly, Print Preview shows blank also, as are saved PDFs.

I have changed the font and re-confirmed that the font colour is, in fact, black.

All printer drivers are up to date and this problem is consistent across all printers tried, including bonjour and other networked printers.

Many thanks

 

[John McGhie]

OK. Nothing in Print Preview means there is nothing being sent to the
printer driver. (Print Preview displays the output from the Printing
subsystem before it gets on the wire to the printer).

Next thing to do is to track down all of your Normal templates and move them
to a folder on the desktop. Word must be quit when you do this, and you
need to re-boot afterward. I want to make quite sure that Word can't find
the old Normal.dotm or any of its forbears (particularly Word X/2004's
"Normal" template).

Then re-start Word and it should create a new, clean default Normal
template.

In the blank document that appears, type a few words and try it.

I'm trying to eliminate a schema problem in the Normal template.

Sorry: This is going to take a while...

Cheers

Hey John

The other apps in Office 08 are printing just fine: Excel, Powerpoint, etc.

Other, non-Office apps print without issue.

Oddly, Print Preview shows blank also, as are saved PDFs.

I have changed the font and re-confirmed that the font colour is, in fact,
black.

All printer drivers are up to date and this problem is consistent across all
printers tried, including bonjour and other networked printers.

Many thanks

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Beth Rosengard]

John & Bozeman,

The same thing has happened to another guy in a thread that I'm following
called, "Printing Issues on WORD 2008 and XEROX Phaser 6110 MFP". I have
escalated to MSFT but I'm going to have him (Ramir) check in here as well in
case the Normal template troubleshooting works.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[Ramir Santos]

Hi John and Beth,

I tried your suggestion for recreating Normal.dotm and I still have the same
problem. One observation while trying to 'Print Preview', I can see 2
screens. The 1st screen I can see my document and suddenly another window
will pop up and the screen will be blank. The 1st window will no longer be
visible or accessible.

For anyone who may be looking for the Normal.dotm file. It will be located
under %user name%Library%Application Support%Microsoft%Office%User
Templates.I tried to use the find option but the program was not able to
locate this file.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi All,

We've escalated this to MSFT. Keep checking back for an update.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[lift6570]

Same problem with no print output (blanks) with Word 2008, Leopard 10.5, Xerox 6110MFP. Blank pages in preview. Printer set up as Bonjour.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

It seems that all of you with this problem are using Xerox printers, right?
That can¹t be coincidence! So ... while we wait for more info from MSFT,
how about contacting Xerox about this? Tell them that there have been no
reports of this problem with other printers, just Xerox, so they don¹t
automatically try to pass it off as a MSFT-only issue. Be sure to give them
full details of the circumstances and your versions of Office and the OS.

Please report back here with anything you find out!!

Thanks,

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[Bozeman]

Hello everyone

Just in response to Beth's note regarding Xerox printers:

I'm experiencing this problem with every printer, whether networked or hard-wired.

Also of note, PDF's generated are also blank. I don't suspect that the issue is related to specific printer drivers.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hmmm. What kinds of printers please?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[Ramir Santos]

Hi Beth,

I am also trying to use the ŒSave As PDF¹ function, but it is also showing
up as blank. Is it using the same printer driver to render into PDF?

 

[Bozeman]

Have attempted to print on:

SAMSUNG CLP 300 - via closed home network & USB
CANON IP-90 - via USB
HP 2200

As well as a few others I don't recall.

Still don't think this is a problem specific to printer drivers themselves.

Also, documents seem to open in "Compatibility Mode" but am unable to find a manual reference on the functioning of this mode. Not sure if there is any relationship there. The failure to print seems consistent across documents both from others and original.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Ramir:

For anyone who may be looking for the Normal.dotm file. It will be located
under %user name%Library%Application Support%Microsoft%Office%User
Templates.I tried to use the find option but the program was not able to
locate this file.

No, it *can* be "anywhere". Use Preferences>File Locations>User
Templates... From within Word to find it.

Click "Modify" and Word will show you where the one it is using is (there
can be several, you need to find the one it is using )

As to your real issue, we have that escalated to Microsoft, and we're just
waiting for them to get back to us and tell us what is wrong.

None of our usual Snake Oil Remedies are working for this one....

Cheers

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

OK, that has GOT to be the printer driver, but in this case, it's your Apple
Post Script driver that's gone bad.

Very (very!) simplistically, the flow of events is:

Word simply hands the document file as raw text (a PRN file...) to the OS X
Printing Subsystem. In most cases, the printing subsystem generates a
PostScript file.

The "Manufacturer's" printer driver is actually only a PPD (PostScript
Printer Definition" file, which modifies the behaviour of Apple's PostScript
engine, then pipes its output to the printer machine.

In the case of PDF, the PPD just streams the PostScript back to the Shell,
where OS X encapsulates it into PDF format. A PDF is simply PostScript
commands encapsulated with the required fonts and images.

So: We WILL find this one and get you a fix. But it requires advanced
diagnostic software to be able to watch the stream flowing between the
various modules and find out where in the chain it is choking.

The fact that Print Preview in Word is bad means there is nothing coming
back from the PPD. That is intercepting the job at a point just before it
gets on the wire to the printer.

Hope this helps

Have attempted to print on:

SAMSUNG CLP 300 - via closed home network USB
CANON IP-90 - via USB
HP 2200

As well as a few others I don't recall.

Still don't think this is a problem specific to printer drivers themselves.

Also, documents seem to open in "Compatibility Mode" but am unable to find a
manual reference on the functioning of this mode. Not sure if there is any
relationship there. The failure to print seems consistent across documents
both from others and original.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Ramir Santos]

Hi John and Beth,

I just wanted to give you an update.

I tried deleting my printer and open my word document. PRINT PREVIEW started
working fine. SAVE AS PDF also worked fine!

I will call customer service for my PRINTER and would request this to be
investigated.

Thank you so much for your time on looking into this matter.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

So here's the word from Microsoft: MSFT and Apple are working on the
issue. At the moment, the only workaround is to change the printer
resolution to something lower, like 600dpi, from the print dialog.

I wish I knew when there would be a fix but I don't. All I can say is be
sure to update both Office and your OS whenever updates are offered!

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Also, documents seem to open in "Compatibility Mode" but am unable to
find a manual reference on the functioning of this mode. Not sure if
there is any relationship there. The failure to print seems consistent
across documents both from others and original.

Compatibility Mode is just a flag that says, more or less, "Alert! this
is a .doc file--features like SmartArt that are dependent on .docx
format will not work in it." Should be unrelated to such major printer
issues.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Thanks, Ramir! It looks like there is more than one workaround!

Beth

 

[Beth Rosengard]

One more thing: Did you then reinstall the printer and get *printing* to
work? Or did deleting the printer just allow the docs to *display* in Print
Preview and Save as PDF?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>