"Connecting to Printer. Press Esc to Cancel" message

[loomandi]

When working away from my office (I'm not connected to the network or its
printers) I get this message in the bottom left message bar about every five
minutes. Word freezes and I can't do any work while it's trying to connect to
a printer that is not there. Can I turn this cycle off somewhere so it will
stop looking for a printer?

 

[Jay Freedman]

When working away from my office (I'm not connected to the network or
its printers) I get this message in the bottom left message bar about
every five minutes. Word freezes and I can't do any work while it's
trying to connect to a printer that is not there. Can I turn this
cycle off somewhere so it will stop looking for a printer?

No, you can't just turn it off. Word requires some printer driver (the
software representation of the printer hardware) in order to work.

What you can do is to install a printer driver on your computer (rather than
relying on one on a network server that you aren't always connected to), and
select that as the Windows default printer when you're out of the office.
That driver could be the same as the one you normally connect to in the
office, or it could be a "software only" driver such as one that creates PDF
files.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Michael]

I'm experiencing this problem as well. I would hope Microsoft would address
this programmatically. It seems this has been an issue with Word for quite
some time. Most times I'm always connected to a local or network printer,
but working remote and not being connected to work -- this isn't acceptable
really. I need to modify my Windows printing environment because Microsoft
Word can't function without a connection to a live printer. Lame.

 

[Terry Farrell]

If you have a local printer at times, you must have the necessary local
printer driver installed. Set this as your default printer and Word will
always start.

Terry

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Actually, Word can "function without a connection to a live printer," but it
requires a connection to a printer *driver.* Even if you will be printing to
a network printer, install the driver for that printer locally and set it as
your default when you are not connected.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org