Color LaserJet is hanging on trying to print powerpoint

[joanne_v_3333]

Printer is wirelessly set up on my network and have had no problems printing emails or word documents, but when trying to print more complicated powerpoints (but nothing too enormous) it starts to send, but then it reverts to "The Printer is in use" and it stalls and doesn't print anything. 

[John_Getzke]

Powerpoint documents can have very complicated images and backgrounds embedded into them.

Try disabling background images and repritning the powerpoint again.  If the slides can print without your backgrounds then either pick new backgrounds or continue to print without them.  You could also explore alternative print language drivers and see if they perform better.  However, printing from Excel has been an issue for a long time.  While slides look simple the instructions to create some of the more complext slide backgrounds and images can explode exponentially to the point where memory on the printer is maxed out.

[joanne_v_3333]

Thank you for your response! I tried this, as well as setting the print quality to medium, and then to low without any change. It simply is not printing. Any other suggestions? 

[John_Getzke]

Try an experiment:

1. Create a brand new and blank powerpoint document. 

2. Add one word of text. 

3. Attempt to print. 

This is the minimum requirement to open and print a powerpoint document.  It also rules out any customizations you may have made to your previous powerpoint documents.  If that doesnt work it might be something else like a driver issue or somethign with Microsoft Office corruption.

You can experiment with alternative print language drivers and see if they perform better.  Otherwise you can run a repair on Microsoft Office from Apps and Features.  This will reset all of your MS Office settings to the default.

[joanne_v_3333]

Yes, I tried this earlier today and it works just fine.  What do you suggest then are my next steps? and thank you SO MUCH for your help! 

I have a creative and marketing services firm, so printing in the highest quality possible while creating beautiful presentations is what I do, so I have to figure out why this brand new printer won't print!  

[John_Getzke]

If printing is critical from powerpoint then I suggest exporting the job to an alternative format like PDF or a word document.  The same content from a different file type should print without any issues.  If so then you can use this work around to print your more complex powerpoint jobs and use normal print for the less complext ones.

Its more or less the nature of working with powerpoint and printers.  There are lots of threads out there describing similar problems with PowerPoint and numerous printer models. 

[joanne_v_3333]

Thank you! I did try printing the document as a PDF and I experienced the same problems. I can't imagine I am the only one having this issue? The next thing I will try is connecting the printer to one of my Google Mesh nodes directly. 

[John_Getzke]

Hmmm,

I wonder how large the PDF document was both before you sent it to the queue and after it was converted to print language.  In windows you can open up the Printers and Scanners area then click the Open Queue button.  One of the columns will be Size.  Pause the print queue and then reprint your PDF document.  You should see it load into the queue with an estimated size, and it may grow once you unpause the queue.  You may observe that a seemingly small document can explode exponentially when it is converted to printer language and sent to the printer.

A trick when printing large PDFs is to use the "Print as Image" feature from Adobe Acrobat.  This flattens some of the more complext printer language and treats everything as an image.  It has larger overhead than normal text only documents but for larger documents it can make the print job easier to process.

If you are dealing with truely massive print jobs then the connection and data transfer to the printer may be the issue.  In that case switching off of wireless will be the best next steps.  You could experiment with a temporary USB printer connection and see if the same problem happens over that connnection technology.  Likewise for an Ethernet cable.

Give these suggestions a shot and compare it to your idea.