no printer selected?

[T Swell]

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

..

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

I'd start by using Apple's Disk Utility to repair permissions on the
drive. Please give that a try and post back whether or not that fixed
the problem.

Thanks.

-Jim

 

[Pf3at]

Hi Jim

That seems like a really strange suggestion. What could the drive have
to do with the printing function?

In any case, it is a brand new drive just installed 8 days ago. I seem
to recall having the same problem with the previous drive which I
bypassed by printing to PDF files (not a viable solution).

Even Word prints correctly, why not Excel?

happy holiday
Tom

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi

If file permissions are set incorrectly on a file that's needed to cause
printing to work, then printing won't work.

When troubleshooting I like to start with easy things that fix a lot at
once, so I suggested repairing permissions. There's no guarantee that
will fix things, but it's easy to do and a definite possibile cure.

-Jim

 

[Pf3at]

Jim,

I ran Disk Utility Repair Permissions and in less than 1 second got an
error message:
Error: No valid packages (-9997)

I hope this isn't bad news(?)
I really appreciate your help, Jim.

- Tom

 

[Bill Weylock]

Tom -


While you are waiting for an expert, I would urge you to be sure you have a
backup of your important files before doing anything else.

I¹ve never seen that error, which may not be terrible. It can¹t be good
though, either.

If you have DiskWarrior, I would run that.

But if you don¹t do regular daily backups, do one now while better advice
may be on the way.


Best,


- Bill

Jim,

I ran Disk Utility Repair Permissions and in less than 1 second got an
error message:
Error: No valid packages (-9997)

I hope this isn't bad news(?)
I really appreciate your help, Jim.

- Tom

Panther 10.3.6
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003

 

[Bill Weylock]

Forgot to suggest something you have probably already done: try Repair using
Disk Utility. You will have to start up from another drive of course.


Best,


- Bill

Jim,

I ran Disk Utility Repair Permissions and in less than 1 second got an
error message:
Error: No valid packages (-9997)

I hope this isn't bad news(?)
I really appreciate your help, Jim.

- Tom

Panther 10.3.6
Office 2004
Windows XP Pro SP2
Office 2003