can't print

[Tom]

Hi

Excel refuses to print saying there is no printer selected. The 'Print'
button is grayed out. Other programs recognize my HP970cxi default
printer just fine.

Have latest HP driver, Office X, latest Panther updates, TiBook G4.

I also tried to drag n drop an Excel document to the desktop printer
icon and it was ignored (other documents work there too).

I can't get a PDF preview from the print dialog either but I can get a
preview from within Excel and it will save to PDF.

Any suggestions?
I'm getting desperate!
- Tom

..

 

[Tom]

Hi again

I still can't print.
Does anyone have a suggestion?

Tom

 

[Tom]

Sure could use some help here...

Hi again

I still can't print.
Does anyone have a suggestion?

Tom

 

[Tom]

Still hoping for a reply.

Tom

 

[Tom]

Still hoping for a creative solution ...

thanks
tom

 

[Tom]

Well it's been over a month and no suggestions.
I suppose I could invest hundreds of dollars in the newer version of Office.
Is there any reason to think it would be better?
Would there be any support for a problem like this?
What are your thoughts?

- Tom

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Well it's been over a month and no suggestions.
I suppose I could invest hundreds of dollars in the newer version of Office.
Is there any reason to think it would be better?
Would there be any support for a problem like this?
What are your thoughts?

Hard to tell, but I doubt upgrading will fix the problem. Since Office
v.X uses the Mac OS X Print functions, I'm not sure why other programs
would recognize your printer and XL won't.

Certainly you should try repairing disk permissions - I know you had
trouble with that a couple months ago, but AFAICT you never mentioned if
you'd gotten that sorted out.

The fact that you can get a preview from within XL means that XL is
accessing a printer driver.

What printer comes up in the "Format For" dropdown in the system Page
Setup dialog (File/Page Setup/Options)? If it's your HP970cxi, does the
driver designation appear underneath the dropdown? Do you see any
difference if you change the printer to "Any Printer"?

Not that I really think it has anything to do with the problem, but in
the File/Page Setup dialog, do you have anything in the Sheet/Print Area
input box? Are the "Black and White" or "Draft quality" checkboxes
checked?

Have you looked at

How to troubleshoot Office printing issues in Mac OS X
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313553

many of the things are not applicable, but perhaps something will
identify the problem.

 

[Tom]

Thanks so much for your practical thoughts, JE McGimpsey.

Yes, I repaired disk permissions (you have a good memory). Excel
doesn't see the printer driver and defaults to 'any printer'. I looked
at the web page you indicated and while it had lots of good
information, none of it helped me. The instructions for using Gimp
Print seem to be for an older version of OSX, and I was unable to use
them.

Excel still can't print.

There are workarounds such as printing to PDF and then printing from
Acrobat, etc. Today I discovered that I can sometimes copy my
spreadsheet to Word and print from there. These are poor substitutes
for real printing capability, however. The strangest thing is that I
can print from every other program including Office programs.

At the moment I can't recall if I mentioned that the printer is an
HP970c; quite a common unit, but the drivers were never fully updated
for OSX and the last I heard, I will never again be able to use certain
functions like printing booklets. It can't even remember the settings
(like draft mode) from one print request to the nest. I found the
programmer who took credit for the OSX version of the driver, but he
understandably doesn't want to talk about it.

Any other ideas?

thank you
Tom