Trouble With Document in Word 2003 Under WinXP Pro

[AA Smith]

I have a couple of documents that won't print. A while back, I narrowed the
problem down to the presence of Index entries in the documents' bodies.
Problem was, there is no Index in the document. The text that's causing
problems was copied into the document from another document, which had
proper Index entries in the body and an Index at the end of the document.
When I copied the test, I could not see the Index entries. I've tried
scanning the doc for "XE" entries, which I deleted. However, something else
is still preventing the document from printing. So, I'd very much
appreciate your help figuring out how to solve the problem and getting the
documents to print.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Are you sure you've found all the XE fields? They're formatted as Hidden
text, so you can see (and Find) them if you display Hidden text. Use Ctrl+*
to display nonprinting characters, then Ctrl+F to open the Find dialog and
search for ^19 XE.

 

[AA Smith]

Thanks Suzann! I'll certainly do that.

Since posting my original on this, I have discovered that when I click on
the Show/Hide Paragraph button, there are some very odd characters imbedded
in the text. Specifically, they LOOK like degree symbols. Word won't let
me delete them using any of the normal methods. And when I try a find and
replace with ALT+0186 in the search argument an with no entry in the Replace
entry, the search reports finding no hits on the ALT+0186.

How can I get rid of those symbols?

 

[AA Smith]

HI, again, Suzanne! I just tried the ^19 XE search suggestion described
below. However, that search did not find any XE entries.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Nonbreaking spaces are displayed using degree symbols, as are (with extra
space) en and em spaces; see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

 

[AA Smith]

Hi, again, Suzanne!

I really don't want non-breaking spaces? How can I get rid of them?

If that not what's keeping my documents from printing, What is? Can I
e-mail the documemt to you or post it on my web site?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You could replace nonbreaking spaces with ordinary spaces. The code for a
nonbreaking space is ^s.

 

[AA Smith]

Hi, again, Suzanne!

Studying this problem further, I have found that Word 2003 under WinXP Pro
SP2 actually outputs the entire 75-page document to the spool. However, it
NEVER prints. After a lengthy delay the spool pops up an error message,
reporting that the document failed to print. Other Word 2003 documents on
this computer print fine on the same printer, so the problem does not seem
to involve the print driver.

What else could be keeping a Word document from printing under the standard
print spool of WinXP Pro SP2?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You might try disabling background printing to see what happens. You can
also set the printer Properties (temporarily) to print directly to the
printer (skipping the spool).

 

[AA Smith]

Thanks, again, Suzanne!

I sincerely appreciate your help. I tried the suggestion in your post
below. That got the document to print, however, not without problems.

The printer I'm using is an HP G85 AIO color printer that features
automatic, two-sided printing, which I very much need for these documents.
The problem is that Word or WinXP Pro apparently ignores the print settings
that I select when printing the document. Instead of printing two-sided in
keeping with the way the printer works, which is automatic two-sided
printing of each page as they print, something mistakenly assumes that the
printer's only two-sided method is manual. So, it prints all of the pages
on one side, then a dialogue pops up telling me to turn the pages over and
reinsert them into the hopper to print side 2. That's not what I need.
It's certainly not what I want.

Consequently, I'd very much appreciate being advised as to how I can get
these documents to print exactly in keeping with the print selections that
I've made.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Most duplex printers will have a setting in the printer Properties to turn
duplexing on. This is outside Word. Then you must be sure that "Manual
duplex" is not checked in the Print dialog. Beyond that, I don't know what
to tell you.

 

[AA Smith]

Hi, again, Suzanne!

It turns out that the problem rests with the way pages are created in the
printer; they are converted by the built-in CPU in the printer from the
format received from the computer (e.g., PCL or PS) to the final dots on the
paper. This conversion needs printer RAM, which is often too small for home
user printers. In this case, MS Word 2003 must have used more system
resources for these documents due to large image files imbedded. Though I
have a full 1gb of SDRAM, that was apparently not enough for the conversion
process. I solved the problem by printing smaller sections of the document
in separate print operations. That worked fine.

Just thought you might like to know.