Sudden Word X printing problem

[Greg Bucher]

I have been using Word X for over a year with no difficulties in a
work environment which has not changed recently in terms of its
computer network.

I applied the most recent Office update 2 days ago, and after doing so
I find that only about the first 10% of any Word document will print.
The part that does print does so without flaw.

My Eudora can print long documents without a problem, as can
PowerPoint, so I think it's neither my system (OS X 10.2.6) nor Office
in general.

In addition, I can use the OS X built in feature to create a .pdf from
the entire file which will then print, and print preview in Word
recognizes the whole document.

I reinstalled Office and the 10.1.2 update, but the printing oddities
continue. I sense that there is likely a preference or some other
file that's corrupted but I don't know where to look or how to isolate
where the problem might lie.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Henry]

Greg Bucher:

Thanks for your post:

I have been using Word X for over a year with no difficulties in a
work environment which has not changed recently in terms of its
computer network.

I applied the most recent Office update 2 days ago, and after doing so
I find that only about the first 10% of any Word document will print.
The part that does print does so without flaw.

My Eudora can print long documents without a problem, as can
PowerPoint, so I think it's neither my system (OS X 10.2.6) nor Office
in general.

In addition, I can use the OS X built in feature to create a .pdf from
the entire file which will then print, and print preview in Word
recognizes the whole document.

I reinstalled Office and the 10.1.2 update, but the printing oddities
continue. I sense that there is likely a preference or some other
file that's corrupted but I don't know where to look or how to isolate
where the problem might lie.

This _might_ help:

Recently I emailed a Word X document to another site, a Mac running OS 9,
went there and edited the doc in Word 98, changed the printer setup,
printed, and emailed the doc back. When it arrived, print preview in Word X
showed page images as truncated at about 80% of the page, sometimes in the
middle of a line, as if the ink didn't stick below 9" down the paper.

So the clue is that maybe your printer setup is confused for some reason,
and Word is formatting for a 3" deep page instead of 11". (In your case
does it happen at the start of a multiple page document, or on each page?)
Try installing a new copy of your printer in Print Center (I guess you
probably did that when you re-installed, but maybe not) and re-setting page
setup. Check all the options.

A lot of people spend a lot of time re-installing. My sense is that is
extremely rare that one really needs to do that. My feeling is that most of
the time the problem is in a preferences or similar type of file.
(Re-install may help just be clearing all such files and re-writing them.)

Thank,

Henry

(e-mail address removed) remove 'zzz'

 

[Greg Bucher]

The problem also occurs with a locked document I created back when I
had Office 98 in OS 9.2, so I think it's not an infiltrating
corruption.

To give an example:

I have a document which has 2 sections, one of text, running 30 pages,
and one of footnotes, running 20 pages. Nice and neat. When I go to
print the document, I get a progress bar first toting up 30 pages (for
the text), followed by a second progress bar toting up 20 pages for
the footnotes. The printer (if warm) starts processing the job a
moment later, and prints out exactly--exactly--the first three pages,
exactly as they look in print preview, with no observable truncation.
Then the job terminates. A moment later, I get two (the first two)
pages of my footnotes, with no observable truncation.

I've looked for hidden embedded commands which might be fooling with
the printing by turning on the show/hide commands button--nothing out
of the ordinary.

It looks like somewhere the printer is being told to print 1/10 the
number of pages as the document (and for larger documents, the number
of pages appears to be reduced from 1/10 to the nearest integer, if
that makes sense). But the printer has no problem with PowerPoint or
Eudora, so it's not (I think) in the printer or driver.

Thanks again for helping!

 

[Henry]

Greg Bucher:

Thanks for your reply on this post:

The problem also occurs with a locked document I created back when I
had Office 98 in OS 9.2, so I think it's not an infiltrating
corruption.

OK, good -- and bad. I'm now completely clueless.

To give an example:

I have a document which has 2 sections, one of text, running 30 pages,
and one of footnotes, running 20 pages. Nice and neat. When I go to
print the document, I get a progress bar first toting up 30 pages (for
the text), followed by a second progress bar toting up 20 pages for
the footnotes. The printer (if warm) starts processing the job a
moment later, and prints out exactly--exactly--the first three pages,
exactly as they look in print preview, with no observable truncation.
Then the job terminates. A moment later, I get two (the first two)
pages of my footnotes, with no observable truncation.
#$#$*#$%&)!%&


I've looked for hidden embedded commands which might be fooling with
the printing by turning on the show/hide commands button--nothing out
of the ordinary.

Good idea.

It looks like somewhere the printer is being told to print 1/10 the
number of pages as the document (and for larger documents, the number
of pages appears to be reduced from 1/10 to the nearest integer, if
that makes sense). But the printer has no problem with PowerPoint or
Eudora, so it's not (I think) in the printer or driver.

It would seem so. OK, here are some desperate measures, use at your own
risk:

1) In the print dialog, beat on the range settings: change them bigger and
smaller and then bigger again. Try printing page range 1 through 51 (say)
to get the whole document, even though "all" should work. Try printing 4
through 50. Waste some paper, recycle.

2) Print the document as PostScript and examine the PS file as text to see
if page 4 through whatever are even represented.

If your printer is PostScript --I don't recall if you said-- here's a
quarter-baked theory: Something in your doc combined with a Word "feature"
is generating a bizarre PostScript command that tells your printer "only 3
pages" or possibly "terminate job" or ("reset" or whatever) at the end of
three pages.

3) Try an entirely different printer. (Did you already try that?)

4) Spend some time with the Format-->Document menu. It wasn't entirely
obvious to me that "Document" also means "Individual or Groups of Sections".
Suddenly it has become clear to me that the messages I've been seeing for
years, "the margins of section 323 are too large for the printer..." can be
cured (should be, anyway) through this menu. There might be something in
the section data that's garbled.

5) Likewise, try renewing the section control material. That's the secret
stuff stored in the final paragraph mark in the section, if I remember
correctly. The MVP site talks about how to deal with corruption in the
sectioning.

6) Make sure the PPD file for your printer is not corrupted, maybe by
loading a fresh copy. Try the driver for your printer, and the "for any
printer" selection.

7) If the contents are sensitive, obscure the contents of the file (say, by
replacing A-Z, a-z with "e") and make sure the problem still occurs, then
send the document to someone else to see if they have the same problem.
I'll volunteer, if it comes to that.

Thanks again for helping!

My pleasure. I hope you can fix it, with my help or despite it.

Good luck!

Henry

(e-mail address removed) remove 'zzz'

 

[M. Katz]

You might also consider the following tests.
1) Print the file to PDF and (A) view the PDF in Preview/Acrobat. (B)
print the PDF from Preview/Acrobat. What do you get?

2) Ask the Print dialog specifically to print some of the pages that
didn't print before (i.e. Print pages 10-11) or something.

3) There is a utility called Print Center Repair. I've used this to
alleviate Print Center constipation in the past when I had a similar
word-doesn't-print-more-than-page-1 problem.
http://www.fixamac.net/software/pcr/
By the way, at the time I had your problem, it only affected one of my
Macs. I could print the _same_ document perfectly from another Mac.
That's another test to try, if you have another Mac or access to one.

M. Katz