Here is a report I've written about a printing problem that is being
experienced by a particular company for whom I had developed a A97 system.
After upgrading to Win XP and AXP, some printing problems have arisen. My
investigations show that it is not related to the particular system I
developed. but is affecting Access in general. So, has nothing to do with
reports being set to print to a default printer (which they all are) or to a
specific printer.
I've seen the Knowledge Base articles that relate to similar problems to
this, but they have not helped with this particular problem.
A further complication is that the "clean build" machines are very
restricted in what the users can and can't do when logged in as "Test1nt".
If anyone has any experience of this problem, I'd welcome any comments.
Steps to reproduce the behaviour:
* Start with a clean build machine logged in as "Test1nt".
* Add a couple of HP LaserJet Printers (e.g. LJ14 & LJ19)
* Set one of these to be the default printer.
* Open Microsoft Access and create a new blank database
* Click on "Reports", then double-click "Create report in design view". A
message will be displayed "There was a problem retrieving printer
information for this object. The object may have been sent to a printer that
is unavailable."
* Change the default printer to "Amyuni PDF Writer", or a non HP Printer
(e.g. CLC700.1 on E5000).
* Try to create a new report again and it works.
* Switch default printer back to one of the HPs and the problem recurs.
As a test, I logged onto the machine as a local administrator and changed
one of the HP printers to use port LPT1. After doing this the problem did
not arise with that printer set as default.
The printer was then reset back to its original port and still the problem
did not arise with this printer set as default.
The printer was then uninstalled and then re-installed, still the problem
did not arise with this printer set as default.
All of this time, the other printer consistently caused the problem to
arise.
On another machine, logged in as "Test1nt", the modified printer was
installed and the problem arose again.
Summary
So far, only networked HP printers have been found to cause the problem. It
seems that changing the port of the printer, and then back again, had an
effect upon the local machine which cured the problem for that particular
printer.
