the text crunched altogether on each line

[Ronald J]

When I went to print a letter I had just corrected, the text all crunched to
the right hand margin, every letter on top of each other. What do I do?

 

[Stefan Blom]

Bob Buckland has a possible solution: "It's a bug that somehow seems
to have Word misreading temporary files related to the printer
currently in use. You can usually 'unscramble' the display from
File=>Print and switch to the printer properties or to another printer
then your normal one, or close Word and delete all files found on
Start=>Search and looking for ~$*.*;*.tmp as the name string then
restarting Word." For help with deleting temporary files, see
http://gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message
news:[email protected]...

 

[Scott E]

I'm having the same issue.

It's intermittent, but it seems to be related to when the users hit print.
They go to the printer, find that the document has printed out garbled, and
when they return to their PC they find that the text is all sitting on top of
itself.

If they swap printers back and forth a few times, or change the view layout
they can usually bypass the problem. But I'm taking a lot of heat for it, so
I'd really like to find a good solution to this instead of a workaround.
I'll see what the temp files can do for me.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Scott,

Part of the problem with solving this is that it has been an intermittent issue and very few of the people reporting it have been
able to spend time documenting it to help find out what, exactly, is causing it, so what we have are workarounds.

[It's not that MS hasn't tried to put out some generic 'try this to fix print problems in Word' articles
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826845&FR=1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826862&FR=1 ]

It's apparently a glitch that involves Word temp files that causes
Word (mainly in 2003) to lose track of the printer it's supposed to be using (as listed in File=>Print) and seems to be related to
add-ins and temp files of Word. What you saw posted before was an extract from one of those workarounds.

What seems to help temporarily :

A. Going to File=>Print and
changing the printer to another one (and back)
will often clear it temporarily,

-or-

B. Switching fonts on the affected text

*BUT* before doing that

C. Clearing out old temp files will more likely be a suitable fix but it's also not permanent in some cases.

1. Close Word.
2. Cleanup and delete all left over
Word temp files using Start=>Search and the
search string of
~$*.*;*.tmp

3. Restart Word and open the same document you were
working on.

The only steps I've had where I can reproduce it is when it occurs, is to send the ~$*.* files to the recycle bin, start Word and
then check the document, then close Word, undelete/restore the ~$*.* from the recycle bin restart Word with the document and the
problem is back. When this occured it was the MS Word Redaction add-in (v1.0 or v1.1) and the printer was an HP.

========
I'm having the same issue.

It's intermittent, but it seems to be related to when the users hit print.
They go to the printer, find that the document has printed out garbled, and
when they return to their PC they find that the text is all sitting on top of
itself.

If they swap printers back and forth a few times, or change the view layout they can usually bypass the problem. But I'm taking a
lot of heat for it, so I'd really like to find a good solution to this instead of a workaround. I'll see what the temp files can do
for me.>>
--
I hope this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office system products MVP

LINKS for the 2007 Office System

1. Read about it, try it, or watch the movie
the 2007 Microsoft Office system iinfo is at
http://microsoft.com/office/preview

2. Already have 2007 Office System Beta 2?
Send Microsoft your feedback (with pictures)
http://sas.office.microsoft.com/

3. Use the 2007 OfficeOnline website without Office2007

a. Install the ActiveX access control
http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT101650581033
b. then visit http://officebeta.iponet.net

 

[Scott E]

Thanks Bob. It definitely seems like we're talking about the same issue. If
it will help the cause, we have several people that use Word 2003, but the
only department that has the problems uses a lot of shared/global templates
that reside on a file server. When they have the problem, they may have
anywhere from 15 documents opened at the same time, but the ones that have
the issue would all come from the same template. At first I thought it was a
corrupted macro, but it makes more sense that a *temp file connected to* that
template or macro might be causing the problem.

For now, I've just deleted all of the temp files I could find. We'll have
to go from there.

Hi Scott,

Part of the problem with solving this is that it has been an intermittent issue and very few of the people reporting it have been
able to spend time documenting it to help find out what, exactly, is causing it, so what we have are workarounds.

[It's not that MS hasn't tried to put out some generic 'try this to fix print problems in Word' articles
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826845&FR=1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826862&FR=1 ]

It's apparently a glitch that involves Word temp files that causes
Word (mainly in 2003) to lose track of the printer it's supposed to be using (as listed in File=>Print) and seems to be related to
add-ins and temp files of Word. What you saw posted before was an extract from one of those workarounds.

What seems to help temporarily :

A. Going to File=>Print and
changing the printer to another one (and back)
will often clear it temporarily,

-or-

B. Switching fonts on the affected text

*BUT* before doing that

C. Clearing out old temp files will more likely be a suitable fix but it's also not permanent in some cases.

1. Close Word.
2. Cleanup and delete all left over
Word temp files using Start=>Search and the
search string of
~$*.*;*.tmp

3. Restart Word and open the same document you were
working on.

The only steps I've had where I can reproduce it is when it occurs, is to send the ~$*.* files to the recycle bin, start Word and
then check the document, then close Word, undelete/restore the ~$*.* from the recycle bin restart Word with the document and the
problem is back. When this occured it was the MS Word Redaction add-in (v1.0 or v1.1) and the printer was an HP.

========
I'm having the same issue.

It's intermittent, but it seems to be related to when the users hit print.
They go to the printer, find that the document has printed out garbled, and
when they return to their PC they find that the text is all sitting on top of
itself.

If they swap printers back and forth a few times, or change the view layout they can usually bypass the problem. But I'm taking a
lot of heat for it, so I'd really like to find a good solution to this instead of a workaround. I'll see what the temp files can do
for me.>>
--
I hope this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office system products MVP

LINKS for the 2007 Office System

1. Read about it, try it, or watch the movie
the 2007 Microsoft Office system iinfo is at
http://microsoft.com/office/preview

2. Already have 2007 Office System Beta 2?
Send Microsoft your feedback (with pictures)
http://sas.office.microsoft.com/

3. Use the 2007 OfficeOnline website without Office2007

a. Install the ActiveX access control
http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT101650581033
b. then visit http://officebeta.iponet.net

 

[Clang]

Bob,
We have had the same problem. It happens when we change the printer from
printing to a regular printer to printing to a .tiff converter. When it
happens it not only affects the open document but also every other Word
document on the workstation. As long as you don't save anything after the
compresses occcurs it can usually be fixed by logging off and then back on.

One thing the third-party software tech support told us we could do was to
turn off printing in the background. This seems to work; however, it is a
real hassle if you do a lot of background printing.

Hi Scott,

Part of the problem with solving this is that it has been an intermittent issue and very few of the people reporting it have been
able to spend time documenting it to help find out what, exactly, is causing it, so what we have are workarounds.

[It's not that MS hasn't tried to put out some generic 'try this to fix print problems in Word' articles
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826845&FR=1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826862&FR=1 ]

It's apparently a glitch that involves Word temp files that causes
Word (mainly in 2003) to lose track of the printer it's supposed to be using (as listed in File=>Print) and seems to be related to
add-ins and temp files of Word. What you saw posted before was an extract from one of those workarounds.

What seems to help temporarily :

A. Going to File=>Print and
changing the printer to another one (and back)
will often clear it temporarily,

-or-

B. Switching fonts on the affected text

*BUT* before doing that

C. Clearing out old temp files will more likely be a suitable fix but it's also not permanent in some cases.

1. Close Word.
2. Cleanup and delete all left over
Word temp files using Start=>Search and the
search string of
~$*.*;*.tmp

3. Restart Word and open the same document you were
working on.

The only steps I've had where I can reproduce it is when it occurs, is to send the ~$*.* files to the recycle bin, start Word and
then check the document, then close Word, undelete/restore the ~$*.* from the recycle bin restart Word with the document and the
problem is back. When this occured it was the MS Word Redaction add-in (v1.0 or v1.1) and the printer was an HP.

========
I'm having the same issue.

It's intermittent, but it seems to be related to when the users hit print.
They go to the printer, find that the document has printed out garbled, and
when they return to their PC they find that the text is all sitting on top of
itself.

If they swap printers back and forth a few times, or change the view layout they can usually bypass the problem. But I'm taking a
lot of heat for it, so I'd really like to find a good solution to this instead of a workaround. I'll see what the temp files can do
for me.>>
--
I hope this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office system products MVP

LINKS for the 2007 Office System

1. Read about it, try it, or watch the movie
the 2007 Microsoft Office system iinfo is at
http://microsoft.com/office/preview

2. Already have 2007 Office System Beta 2?
Send Microsoft your feedback (with pictures)
http://sas.office.microsoft.com/

3. Use the 2007 OfficeOnline website without Office2007

a. Install the ActiveX access control
http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT101650581033
b. then visit http://officebeta.iponet.net

 

[Conine]

Minor update on this:

Problem still going on. The problem seems to be isolated to a group of
users in a particular department. The difference between them and everyone
else is that they are in Word constantly, they can have anywhere from 1-10
Word files going at a time, and they all use Word Macros. Some, if not all
of the macros were developed using Office XP. They are currently using
Office 2003.

I had a search macro that would delete temp files in their directory. I
just ran it as I saw fit, typically in the morning.

I think they've given up on me finding a solution for them and are currently
silently grumbling while living with the problem. They just swap printers
back and forth until the problem resolves itself. Unfortunately, they don't
bother reporting it to me as much anymore, unless it's really being a bear -
but before they stopped, it really seemed like there was a particular macro
that it would happen in all of the time.

I guess what I'm getting at is this - could something in a macro be causing
this issue?