According to contributor Bob Buckland: "It's a bug that somehow seems to
have Word misreading temporary files related to the printer currently in
use. You can usually 'unscramble' the display from File=Print and switch
to the printer properties or to another printer then your normal one, or
close Word and delete all files found on Start=Search and looking for
~$*.*;*.tmp as the name string then restarting Word." See also
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Carrie wrote:
Hello,
I have a user who is merging letters in Word 2003 with a Microsoft
Excel 2003 data source. She has been using these letters for a while
(we send them monthly) and lately has run into a problem. After the
merge is done, she opens all the letters into a new file (standard
stuff, she's been doing it this way for a long time) and it opens
fine. When she goes to print the letters, all of the text "smooshes"
together and she ends up with what basically looks like a vertical
line of black smudges along the right hand margin of the page. To
further the oddness, after she closes the document and choose to NOT
SAVE her changes, it looks the exact same upon reopening. I don't
know what to make of it.

Thanks for your help.
Carrie