Word 2000/XP Infamous 2.67 Margin Error

[Mike L.]

Ok, I've looked through a lot of various threads via Google groups and
have seen many many people post about this issue. Therefore, I will
make my description brief. It's random, OS independent, and results
from either existing documents (locally or on the server) and newly
created documents, but of course not ALL of either case. It will
either a) change the left margin to 2.67" and then give the outside
printable area msg, or it will change BOTH the bottom and left margins
to 2.67".

Now, as I said I've seen a lot of people post about this, but have not
seen an acceptable solution. It is not pratical to have to recreate
all the word documents, and while word /a will maybe solve new
documents, it doesn't account for existing ones. Mind you, this is
happening on machines that have had it installed for quite sometime
(windows2k and office2k) and freshly set up systems (Win2k/Office 2k,
Win2k/Office XP, WinXP/Office2k).

Also, regarding the printer itself, it is an HP 4500N color laser jet.
Now, I've noticed that the 4000 series seem to be the troubled ones.
The 2k server distributes the pcl 5e driver when the printer is set up
on the client machine. I've tried also using the pcl 6 driver, on a
fresh installation of 2k pro and office XP, and within 24 hours the
problem appeared.

The craziest part is that we never encountered this until we switched
from a Netware server to a win2k server. While I don't immediately
suspect that this is the culprit, as the drivers are essentially the
same (Netware printer drivers were client based, win2k server
distributes them from itself), it has not left the back of my mind.

Personally, I have never seen this on my workstation. I run winXP
with OfficeXP and don't see this.

BTW: OfficeXP is Service Pack 2, WinXP is Service Pack 1, office 2k is
either SR-1, SR-1a, or Sp3, and win2k is service pack 2.


So I pose the question again, are there any solutions to this?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm running Office XP under Windows 2000 and printing to a LaserJet 4100
(the exempt one of the 4000 series, apparently), and I haven't seen it.
Although most reports do implicate HP printers, there are scattered reports
of problems with Lexmark as well. It's not so much that it's an impossible
problem to troubleshoot (though it may be, since it is intermittent) as that
MS would rather blame HP and vice versa.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word

 

[keenable]

At work I have 3 hp printers readily available. Documents with printer default HP4000 printer page setup wants bottom margin to be 2.67" and if I "ignore" printer alerts some text is outside of margin. If I print same document to other hp printers the "ignored" margin prints fine, no alert that any text is outside of margin. If I go to print document then on the HP4000, prints fine, no alert. Not proof, but suggests problem is HP4000. And not elegant, but fix is print somewhere else first then subsequent print to HP4000 will be fine. Go figure....