WYSIWYG printing -- not.

[Rick Ernst]

I'm not sure whether this hasn't been covered before, but my search did
not indicate any discussion. With Office 2004 for the Mac, I have been
having serious problems with WYSIWYG printing. Using Adobe Garamond,
what I see on screen is no longer what I get in print. Basically, the
screen will show that the content of the cell fits well within the
boundaries, but the printed version does not fit. For figures, I end up
with #### and for tables things may get totally out of whack, since the
program will add lines, and content will be cut off at either end. It's
of course a pain to print and then go back to fix problems when you
can't tell without another print whether you fixed them.

Anyone has encountered this, and what solutions may there be? Thanks.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm not sure whether this hasn't been covered before, but my search did
not indicate any discussion. With Office 2004 for the Mac, I have been
having serious problems with WYSIWYG printing. Using Adobe Garamond,
what I see on screen is no longer what I get in print. Basically, the
screen will show that the content of the cell fits well within the
boundaries, but the printed version does not fit. For figures, I end up
with #### and for tables things may get totally out of whack, since the
program will add lines, and content will be cut off at either end. It's
of course a pain to print and then go back to fix problems when you
can't tell without another print whether you fixed them.

Anyone has encountered this, and what solutions may there be? Thanks.

I've never seen this myself, though there've been similar reports. IIRC,
the most common suggestion is to update your printer driver - it's
metrics are what XL uses to generate the print file. You may need to
quit and restart XL for the change to take effect.

Changing the Page Setup/Page/Print Quality setting may also solve the
problem - some drivers apparently don't interact well with XL unless
print quality is set to High.

Do you see the same thing in Print Preview (you should)?

 

[Rick Ernst]

Thanks. The printer I'm using is an HP 1160 through USB for which the
driver is part of Tiger (although I had similar problems on other
printers). Print quality is set to "high," but what I'm seeing in print
preview does not at all correspond to the printout. For example, one
line fills the cell. In the printout, it goes beyond the cell boundary,
but--in print preview it's way to the left of the cell boundary. In
other words, I now have three versions: print preview farthest from the
right cell boundary, on-screen to the edge of the cell boundary, and
the actual print beyond the cell boundary. I did not have this problem
with Office X on the same computer, with the same printers.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Rick-

There appears to be a misconception which may be the root of our problem.

OS X (Tiger or otherwise) does not provide any "device specific" printer
drivers. It contains a generic driver for "Any Printer" so someone can
install the OS and be able to print right off the bat, but that driver does
not effectively address the requirements of any particular printer. The most
common shortcoming is with graphic elements. Perhaps you have been 'lucky'
until now, but it appears your luck has run out.

The HP driver may have been installed by the dealer, but especially if it
pre-dates your current versions of the OS _or_ Office, it probably needs to
be updated. If you don't have the driver software for your HP 1160, go to
the HP website & download it from there. (In fact, even if you do have the
original it would be best to check for an update.)

It is also possible that even if you do have an up-to-date driver that Page
Setup is set for "Any Printer" even though your HP is selected in the Print
dialog box. I'm not certain that this would produce the type of behavior you
are experiencing, but it could be a factor.

HTH |:>)

 

[Rick Ernst]

Hi,

much appreciate the advice, but here's the text from the HP web site
when you're trying to download the driver for Tiger: "The latest HP
printer driver for this device [HP 1160] is built into Tiger for print
only functionality and does not require a download or reinstallation of
any HP software to print." But I've had this problem with other
printers (HP, Samsung) under X 10.3 and before, ausing devide-specific
drivers. I can work around it, but it strikes me as odd that this
occurred while I moved from Office X to 2004. Anyway, seems I'm the
only one, so I'll cope.

Thx, Rick

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Rick-

Have you tried trashing the printer preferences? If not, turn the
printer off & give that a shot, then reinstall the fresh driver & make
sure to run Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permssions routine (or
equivalent). I would also reboot, and if it is a USB connection,
disconnect the printer, reconnect it, then power it up & see if things
improve.

HTH |:>)