Odd behaviour with HP 2200 DTN printer
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A client of mine has one of these with a duplexer, connects via a JetDirect card (I must point out at this juncture that we didn't supply any of the hardware. They use MS Office 2003, primarily Word and Excel, plus a number of custom written apps. Printing from Word and the other apps works fine, but there is this weird thing that happens if they switch from Excel to Word, and back again. Say they're entering figures in a s/sheet, and they alt-tab to word to double check something, then alt-tab back. They finish punching in the numbers and hit the print button on the Excel toolbar (standard, not customised). Instead of getting a print, they end up with a PCL file in the current folder. :omg: None of the other apps do this, not even the ones I wrote :) Unfortunately, this happened with Office 2000 as well, so their own IT people upgraded the machine to 2003, but no help (XPSP2, btw). Now this plainly doesn't make sense, because it only happens if they switch away to word and back again. Anyone any ideas? I'm trying to get driver versions etc, but it's a tad tricky, since their own IT people are remote from the site, and so am I.
Steve S Developer for hire
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A client of mine has one of these with a duplexer, connects via a JetDirect card (I must point out at this juncture that we didn't supply any of the hardware. They use MS Office 2003, primarily Word and Excel, plus a number of custom written apps. Printing from Word and the other apps works fine, but there is this weird thing that happens if they switch from Excel to Word, and back again. Say they're entering figures in a s/sheet, and they alt-tab to word to double check something, then alt-tab back. They finish punching in the numbers and hit the print button on the Excel toolbar (standard, not customised). Instead of getting a print, they end up with a PCL file in the current folder. :omg: None of the other apps do this, not even the ones I wrote :) Unfortunately, this happened with Office 2000 as well, so their own IT people upgraded the machine to 2003, but no help (XPSP2, btw). Now this plainly doesn't make sense, because it only happens if they switch away to word and back again. Anyone any ideas? I'm trying to get driver versions etc, but it's a tad tricky, since their own IT people are remote from the site, and so am I.
Steve S Developer for hire
Hi, Try to reproduce it once again, and watch for tooltip on the 'print' button. It always displays the default printer (or at least the one which is currently set up for use with Excel). Is it "print to file" when the problem is going to occur again? Regards
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Hi, Try to reproduce it once again, and watch for tooltip on the 'print' button. It always displays the default printer (or at least the one which is currently set up for use with Excel). Is it "print to file" when the problem is going to occur again? Regards
Nope. The tooltip correctly displays the printer it's going to use, and using the toolbar button or the menu option makes no difference, it still dumps PCL. OTOH, if excel is launched, a worksheet is loaded, and printed with no switch to word and back again (whether via Alt-TAB or directly via the task bar) it doesn't happen, so it seems to be some odd behaviour when switching from one app to another.
Steve S Developer for hire
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Nope. The tooltip correctly displays the printer it's going to use, and using the toolbar button or the menu option makes no difference, it still dumps PCL. OTOH, if excel is launched, a worksheet is loaded, and printed with no switch to word and back again (whether via Alt-TAB or directly via the task bar) it doesn't happen, so it seems to be some odd behaviour when switching from one app to another.
Steve S Developer for hire
And having updated the printer drivers to the latest from HP, it (pause for dramatic effect) does exactly the same. The PCL file seems to contain the complete document. The *really* weird thing is that File/Print/OK does the same :( However, selecting a different printer, then reselecting the original one doesn't do this. Since it only affects Excel, the templates supplied to the user do exactly that when the print command is issued (which is a work-around), and for ad hoc documents, the user now knows to select a different printer and reselect the HP2200. Going to play with some spooler-related settings (in a controlled manner) to see if that makes any difference. :sigh::sigh::sigh::sigh:
Steve S Developer for hire