Troubleshoot Printing Issues in Microsoft Word

Word

Page Borders Don't Print (especially the bottom one)

This occurs because most printers are incapable of printing so close to the bottom of the sheet of paper. Determine the minimum margins for your printer and make sure your default margins are correct. Once that's done, this particular issue can only be resolved by changing the settings on the options button dialog of the Page Border tab. Change the Measure From option from "edge of page" to "edge of text".

Blank Pages at the End of a Document

This occurs because you have non-printing characters at the bottom of your document that are forcing a page break.

1. Turn your show/hide button on

2. Hit View and choose Print Layout

3. Hit Ctrl+End

4. Backspace until all non-printing characters have been deleted.

If you have a table on your first page and cannot remove the paragraph return on the second page, select the paragraph return and change the font size to 1 pt. You cannot select font size 1; you must type it into the font size box and hit enter.

"Margins are outside the printable area of the page" Error Message

Determine the minimum margins for your printer:

  1. Open a blank document.
  2. Set all margins to zero, and hit OK.
  3. You should be told that your margins are outside of the printable area, and choose to Fix or Ignore it. Choose FIX.
  4. Go back into the margins and note them. These are the minimum margins of which your printer is capable. Set your Word default margins to be at least as large as the minimums.

To change Word's default margins on your computer, hit File-Page Setup, choose the Margins tab. Change your margins and hit the DEFAULT button at the lower-left of the dailog. This will NOT change existing documents; only new ones.

Text Prints with Spaces Between Letters or Overlapping Text

This is a definite printer driver issue. Be sure you have the right printer driver for your printer and operating system.