I am reposting this solution because I made a mistake in changing the subject
line and clearing out the original message.
We ended up contacting Microsoft support on this one and they gave us a
solution that fixes this printing problem. On my blog, I have enclosed a
picture of what the compressed text looks like if you are wondering if this
solution will fix your problem. I can't embed pictures on Microsoft's
discussion groups, so creating this page on my blog was needed. I apologize
for the mixup.
Link to solution:
http://www.brianstevenson.com/blog/?p=136
Sincerely,
Brian
"Brian Stevenson" wrote:
Many of our workstations are plagued with a printing problem. We have these
protected forms on our Intranet. They will fill out these forms and
save/print them. The problem is when they click print, the text condenses
and overlaps into a single character per line. So the field descriptor,
"First Name" will actually look like the overlap of all those characters in
the space single character. This will happen on the screen and on the
printed document.
There are two [unacceptable] work arounds to this issue:
Firstly, they can go to File Print... select a different printer, Click
Close. Then go back to File Print and select the right printer and click
"Print".
Secondly, they can go to File Print... and click the Properties button for
that printer. They can click OK at the properties screen and then click
print.
The problem IS NOT printer specific. Meaning, it's not an HP print driver
issue. To prove this point, I set the default printer in Windows to the
PDFCreator printer (a local 3rd party program on the computer). It did the
exact same jibberish thing when printing to PDF as it did sending the job to
our networked HP Color Laser Jet 5550 and HP Laser Jet 8000 and HP Laser Jet
8500.
Furthermore, I captured the PostScript print job to a PRN file. Using a 3rd
party program, I sent that PRN file to other printers and it printed with the
same text garbage. I viewed the PRN file using GSView (GhostScript) and the
same garbage was rendered on the screen.
I made the assumption that print drivers were out of date. Nope, we're
current.
I made the assumption that there was something wrong with the word document,
so I selected the entire document and did a CTL+Q to remove all formatting.
I reprotected it and it printed with the same squoosed text.
I made the assumption that there was some meta data hidden in the document
so I acquired a 3rd party program to scrub the document of hidden data.
Nope, still garbage when printing.
I made the assumption that the word document itself was corrupt. So I
recreated FROM SCRATCH and retyped everything with no copy/paste. I
reprotected it. Sorry, still have the same text garbage when printing.
An observation, it's not just affecting one computer it's affecting what
appears to be random computers. What's strange is that we have a 3rd party
automation tool to build each one of these computer unattended. So, in
theory, they should all be reasonably similar.
Another observation, the garbled/compressed text only displays on screen in
Normal and Print "View" modes. Not the Web mode. Regardless of what mode
it's in, it will always print like crap.
Another observation, if I protect the document for Comments or Tracked
Changes (not for Form Fields), it prints just fine.
Another observation, if we save the document as a protected RTF, it prints
just fine. However, protected RTF doen't have a password feature, so that
solution is out.
The common thread here is that this is affecting Word documents that are
protected for Form Fields. If I unprotect the word document, it prints just
fine.