Network Printer Problem in Ms-Word

[Pradeep1210]

Hi,

I have a shared printer on the network. Many a times the PC to which that printer is connected is turned off. In such a situation, whenever I open ms-word, it unnecessarily starts searching for the printer and usually stops responding during that time, until it shows the following dialog box:


How can I disable letting it search for the network printer until I give the Print command?

Pradeep

[Hack]

Do you have "Printer Auto Select" set as your default tray?

[chris128]

Do you have "Printer Auto Select" set as your default tray?

huh?

@Pradeep - I've come across this problem before and if I remember rightly it only happens when the printer that is unavailable is your default printer. So as a workaround I'd suggest either set a different default printer and then select the printer manually when you want to print to it, or use a batch file or vb script etc to change the default printer and then launch word. So instead of clicking the Word icon to open Word you would click this script and it would change your default printer and then open word itself.

Both of these things are far from ideal but I dont know of any other way to get round it. I'll do a bit of research now though and see if there is a proper solution

[Pradeep1210]

Do you have "Printer Auto Select" set as your default tray?

No, It is set to "Use printer settings"

[Pradeep1210]

huh?

@Pradeep - I've come across this problem before and if I remember rightly it only happens when the printer that is unavailable is your default printer. So as a workaround I'd suggest either set a different default printer and then select the printer manually when you want to print to it, or use a batch file or vb script etc to change the default printer and then launch word. So instead of clicking the Word icon to open Word you would click this script and it would change your default printer and then open word itself.

Both of these things are far from ideal but I dont know of any other way to get round it. I'll do a bit of research now though and see if there is a proper solution

Nice workaround.
But unfortunately we have only one printer installed (i.e. the network printer), and we don't have adequate privileges to add/remove printers.
I was thinking if there is some option from within Ms-Word to fix this.

[chris128]

If you've got Office 2003 installed then you should also have the Microsoft Image Writer or something or other printer too?

[loglorry]

Hi we solved a lot of our print problems in Word by installing a simple toolbar application for Word called Tray Selector. It's a great print utility you can download a free trial from http://www.trayselector.com

Hope that helps.