Word 2003 prints characters on top of each other

[Lee]

We recently installed Office 2003 after using Office 97 and have since
experienced an unusual problem. Our printing consists of many Word
documents containing text and merge fields printed to multiple
networked HP printers. The problem, which is intermittent and cannot be
duplicated on demand, consists of various lines of document text and/or
fields that appear ok until the print button is clicked. As soon as the
print button is clicked these various text lines and/or fields
instantly overwrite and compress to their left margin, tab, or indent.
The result appears as a black blob as though all characters were
printed one on top of each other. Not all text or fields are affected.
We've tried all available print drivers and rebooted printers and print
server, but the problem keeps reappearing. Any help would be
appreciated.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Lee,

Have you tried downloading the most recent print driver from the HP
website? Upgrading to a new version of Word often requires updated
graphics and printer drivers.

If the problem were more reproducible, on specific documents, I'd suspect
the documents were damaged. But given your description, I'm more inclined
to think it's the printer driver.

You may want to take this to the more specialized, word.printing.fonts
newsgroup.

We recently installed Office 2003 after using Office 97 and have since
experienced an unusual problem. Our printing consists of many Word
documents containing text and merge fields printed to multiple
networked HP printers. The problem, which is intermittent and cannot be
duplicated on demand, consists of various lines of document text and/or
fields that appear ok until the print button is clicked. As soon as the
print button is clicked these various text lines and/or fields
instantly overwrite and compress to their left margin, tab, or indent.
The result appears as a black blob as though all characters were
printed one on top of each other. Not all text or fields are affected.
We've tried all available print drivers and rebooted printers and print
server, but the problem keeps reappearing. Any help would be
appreciated.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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