MS Word 2002 Printing Problem--Help Needed!?

Question

I have a large 156 page Word document that I'm working with. Some sections are not printing properly. While the document looks fine on the screen, when I print it, the text appears reduced so that the font appears smaller and the margins look huge. Sections of the manuscript that I did later print normally. I've gone all through the settings and I can't figure out what to do to fix this problem! Any help is appreciated.

Thanks for the help so far! I checked and my printer driver is up to date and I don't need any Word updates installed.

Next I'll try the pasting into a new document idea...

Answer 1

The "what you see is NOT what you get" bug. Happens a lot in Word.

When you create a document in Word, it always adjust the document slightly on the screen to match you default printer. If you create the document with one printer as default, and then switch to another, it can cause printing problems. Same if you switch printers back and forth while creating a document. It will do funny things with the document.

Recommend: Go through and put in a section break about every fifth page. Then if something happens that alters the fonts, margins, etc, that is the furthest it can go.

Then, print the sections one by one. When you find a "problem" spot, then select the ENTIRE section (all five pages) and reset the font, margin, etc. for the entire section. I know the feeling - you can't see what is wrong, but the computer can. Often when we try to fix it, we don't select the spot where the problem really is becasue it looks alright to us. So always select a bigger area and reset it.

Finally, if all else fails, create a new document with the font, margins, etc, you want set up. Open the original document and resave it as a text file (.txt) Note: This will NOT change the original Word document, it will just make a new file in text format. Open the text file, and copy the text about five pages at a time into the new document. This will keep the text, but remove all the formatting. Finally, go back through and reformat the new document the way you need it.

Good luck....

Answer 2

Unfortunately, there is no sure-fire method to troubleshoot this problem. Here are some suggestions.

First, visit your printer manufacturer's web site, and make sure you are using the latest version of your printer driver. If you are not, update your printer driver as the first step.

Second, make sure you have applied all updates to Word 2002. To do this, visit http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftudpate and apply all updates presented.

Thid, from the Edit menu, choose Select All, and again from the Edit menu choose Copy. Then from the File menu, create a New blank document, and from the Edit menu choose Paste. Then Save As under a new document name. You'd be amazed as to how many problems this solves.

Finally -- and this is the most tedious -- go through your document page by page, and make sure that the formatting is correct.

Note that your should try printing after each of these steps. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

If the entire document is formatted the same you can click "control + A" to select the whole document and click the format you desire. Oh the other hand if different pages have different formatting you need to go to the pages that are not printing correctly and check the margins and formatting for those pages. Hope this helps. :)

Answer 4

Update the printer driver. Also try printing individual sections at a time instead of the entire document at once.