MS Publisher will only print black and white to a color printer

[tplawson]

Hello,

I have an issue that is perplexing me. I have a user who was using MS Publisher 2007 to print an Avery 5389 Label Postcard. We have 2 HP LaserJet 3800 network printers each with the same drivers. When trying to print this document, the small print preview window as well as the final product come out black and white instead of color when using one of these printers. The printer that is only showing black and white, will print color from other MS applications like Word. I also tried another document to that same printer in Publisher and it too came out black and white only. It seems to be related to Publisher. Both printers are using the same driver and the same settings. I can't find any other differences.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar or have any ideas?

 

[r_manic]

Obviously it's not a system thing, since you can print in color with your other apps. Maybe you have to fix your printer settings for MS Pub.

Try this: Go to File > Print Setup > Details. Look for a button that lets you change your printer's advanced settings or something like that. Basically, make sure COLOR IS ENABLED here.

Lemme know if this works!

 

[ra-jtc]

This is the EXACT same problem I am having with my printer, only I am trying to print in Adobe Illustrator. I have no option under the print settings to select whether or not I want to exclusively print in black and white. It only lets me print in B&W on a color printer. Other computers work with it (running on XP) but mine won't (running on Vista) Our printer is a networked HP Colored Lazer printer (sorry I don't know the model but the printer is fairly new). I also tried to print out other documents, namely in word and off the internet, and it would only print in B&W. PLEASE HELP!

 

[psgraham]

This has been an ongoing intermittent problem for my users. I have several HP 3800 and they will print a color page as black and white. We have experienced it in PowerPoint and Excel. I have updated the firmware and drivers (PCL6) to the latest version. That has not helped. I have seen the problem posted at several sites but so far no one has posted a fix.

 

[Xterminat]

Hi there PSGraham,

I am having a simular problem. HP has a knowledge base article on there website and it seems to point to a XML file that controls whether or not the printer can print in colour or not. Even if it is a colour printer this MMP file seems to disable it.

I have found out several things.

1. If you don't need to use the UNIVERSAL PRINTER DRIVER PCL 5 or PCL 6 then don't. (Windows has a decent driver that enables the colour option on the printer driver that is installable within Windows.

(Im am trying to work out a fix for this because I need the x64bit driver and the i386 driver for both types of clients.) But I did find that if I use the Universal Printer Driver it doesn't even enable the colour option.

2. I am still looking into the MMP file thing that they are explaining about to see if I can enable it.

Cheers

Mark

 

[noelle1000]

Well, add me to the list of greyscale-only output from Word.

My printer is a Dell 3130CN. My OS is Mac OS10.6.4.

EVERY other program prints in color (all Adobe programs, internet pages, etc) Have poured through every setting available for Print and in the Preferences for Word. Am getting really tired of emailing documents to another computer and having it print from there. No changes are made to the document on the other computer and it prints in color. So, yeah.

Hmmm...just had a brilliant work-around. Save the file as a .pdf. Open in a different program. Print. FAIL. Acrobat showed it in full color, print preview and all. Can you believe it still printed in greyscale??? I guess the ghosts of MS are not so easily exorcised.

I DID just get it to print in color. Dumb luck, but I'll take it. Here's what I did - I changed a color setting in the print features. I realize all printers have different print features, but mine worked by going under the Color Matching prefs (once the print window is activated) and changing from "ColorSync - Automatic" profile to "In Printer". I have no idea what any of that means. At this point, I am just happy to see colored pages coming out of my COLOR printer!

Noelle from "Go Big Red" Nebraska (which beats the heck out of "Go Big Grey"!)

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey