cant print from word or excell

Clarifications

Also which version of Windows and what is the Network Topology?

Col

Hi Infinity,
This happens often in Vista and 7 when printer drivers get corrupted but is quite easy to fix.
Open an elevated command prompt (press start menu, type cmd, right click on cmd where it has appeared at the top of the list, click run as administrator). In the black window which has opened type "NET STOP SPOOLER" without the quotes and press enter. Leave the window open as you'll need it again in a minute.
You now need to get rid of the faulty drivers, however Windows will not let you delete them.
In the start menu type "C;\windows\system32\drivers\etc\spool\" (again without the quotes) and press enter. In the window that has appeared you'll find a number of folders. Create a new folder and name it (junk/crap/rubbish/trash or whatever takes your fancy). Drag all of the other folders (w32x86 etc) into the folder you have just created.
Go back to the black command window and type "NET START SPOOLER".
When you next try to print windows should re-install the printer drivers and your problem should have gone away. If it comes back though there are probably out of date xp drivers on the print server you are using.
Just to warn though, sometimes if you have pdf printing software, screenscraping software or similar tools installed, they may get trashed and require a re-install after doing this.

Hope this helps.

Remove the print queues from the device and printers in control panel, then restart spooler service. Select the XPS printer (or adobe or fax, anything in the devices and printers list) and you should see the Print Server properties option appear. If you select that and go to the drivers tab you can see all the print drivers installed, select the problem ones and remove them, I usually remove the driver and package when prompted. Then readd the network print queue - removing the driver and driver package forces it to download the driver fresh from the server again. We working a mixed environment and have been having similar issues regularly, this usually fixes it for a while, hopefully until we get everyone onto the 64-bit platform and can dump the XP drivers.

If you're going to clear printers go with OurITLady's method - it is the proper way to do it. Manually deleting files in the spool folder might work but could cause issues, and will leave cruft in the registry.

If you can print to the same printer from other programs though I'd suggest its the common print code in the Microsoft Office programs that's at fault. The first step I'd try would be to do a repair install of Office. You can do this by going to Add/Remove Programs (XP) or Uninstall a Program (Vista/7) from the Control Panel. Find Office and choose repair. If that doesn't work try uninstalling and reinstalling Office (note that you will require your product key, and will need to reactive the software). Only if those fail to fix the problem would I delete printers.