Forcing Printouts to Black and White

Kevin has created a performance assessment document (about 12 pages long) that includes many tables separated by sections of text. Many of the tables have rows that have been shaded. He is wondering if there is a way, preferably without using a macro, that he can "force" the document to print the shaded rows in black and white, even when it is being printed on a color-capable printer.

There is no way to do this in Word, and it is not entirely clear if it is possible to do it using a macro. There is a way to configure color graphics so that they print as grayscale, but you want to print colored shading, which doesn't have the same configuration settings available as do graphics.

It is possible, with some printer drivers, to force a document to print in grayscale, but this capability will vary from printer to printer. (You access these individual printer capabilities by displaying the Print dialog box, and then clicking the Properties button for the printer you are using.) Since these capabilities are handled by the printer driver, there is no way to access them with a macro, and even if you could, there is no guarantee that they are available for all printers.

The best solution might be to changing the shading used in the tables in the first place. It won't look as colorful on-screen, but it will provide the desired black and white printout.