Errors While Printing

WordTips reader Michael Pryor complained that he was getting errors when trying to print a document. The error message he was seeing did not make sense, since the document was not terribly large, only two basic fonts were being used, the computer system had plenty of memory, and there was quite a bit of hard drive space still left.

A wide range of suggestions poured in from WordTips readers. (Gotta love those readers!) One suggestion was to check out the system resources when the printing error occurs. System resources can be allocated and not freed by an errant program--even when the program is no longer running! One way to test for this sort of problem is to restart your system and immediately try printing the document. If it prints without problem, then low system resources is probably the culprit.

Anyone who has had printer problems in Windows systems before knows that the first thing to check is to ensure you have the latest and greatest printer driver installed. You can verify this by a quick trip to the printer manufacturer's Web site. You should also ensure that the printer Properties dialog box (which reflects the settings applied to the printer driver) has settings that match the true capabilities of your printer. For instance, you should always ensure that the printer memory setting in the Properties dialog box matches the true amount of memory you have installed in your printer.

It may sound strange to say, but you should not print documents from floppy disk. It often happens that a friend copies a document to a floppy disk, hands the disk to you, and you simply try to print it. Depending on the size of the document and what it contains, this can be a recipe for problems. The reason is that Word stores some temporary files in the same directory where the document is located--in this case on the floppy. If there is not enough room, then the printing simply won't happen. You can compensate for this cause by copying the document to your hard drive before opening and printing.

It is also possible that graphics within the document are causing the problem. This can be true if there are a large number of linked or complex graphics. (If the graphics are linked, they won't contribute to a larger document size since only a link is saved, but they will affect the size of the file sent to the printer.) To test this out, turn off the printing of graphics and try to print the document. You can turn off graphics printing by following these steps:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Print tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Ensure the Drawing Objects check box is cleared.
4. Make sure the Draft Output check box is selected.
5. Click on OK.

Other readers suggested that the problem may lie in the temporary folder used by Word. For instance, if temporary files are stored in C:\TEMP on your system, you should exit all programs and check the contents of the folder. It is easy for the folder to "fill up" with old temporary files that are no longer needed. Select the files and delete them, thereby freeing up a large chunk of disk space on your system. This can help clear up some printing problems.

If the printing problem is with a single document, it may be because the document itself is damaged. Because damaged documents are inherently unstable, they can cause error messages that are not related to the true problem. In this case, you need to recover the data in the document as best you can and get rid of the offending document. You can find some help in this area from Knowledge Base article Q87856.

One reader suggested that on some systems the print spooler can sometimes get corrupted. To fix this, you need to have Windows Explorer set to Show All Files so you can find the spool folder (the spool folder has it's Hidden attribute set). The folder is at ...\Windows\spool. Make sure all applications are closed, find the spool folder in an Explorer window, leave the folder as is but delete everything in there, then restart your system. The next time you try to print, Windows will rebuild the stuff it needs.

Microsoft also acknowledged a problem with Word 97 that caused (among other things) printer errors. As noted in Knowledge Base article Q163255, the problem is caused when pieces and parts of Word remain in memory even after exiting the program. When you later restart Word, the old parts are still there and can cause havoc. To check if this is the cause, exit Word and take a look at the Task Manager. If you see processes in memory that belong to Word, terminate them. The problem should be fixed. (You can find more information on this bug in the Knowledge Base article.)

If you still have problems, there is one other thing you can check. If the version of Word you are using is an upgrade, it is possible that there are still remnants of the old Word floating around in your system. A potential way to solve this problem is to delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\Data Registry key. (You should replace 9.0 with the version number of Word that are no longer on your system. For instance, 8.0 if you upgraded from Word 95.) Removing this key is necessary due to the fact that a damaged Data key may yield "strange" behavior in Word--even behavior that may not seem related to such a Registry key.