Strange printing issue in Outlook - randomly wont print emails

[Red Squirrel]

At work we use Outlook 2003 on exchange, and I have this user who cannot print certain emails. I forwarded one of those to me, and sure enough I can't print it either. I forwarded it to my home account, VPNed in (on another machine then my main work one) opened it in Outlook through imap, still, can't print. Tried in thunderbird, no problem printing. Testing with the PDF creator but also with physical printers.

This is basically what happens, if you hit the print icon there is no reaction at all. no printer icon in sys tray, no hour glass. nothing. If you click file / print you get the printer selection, but then when you select the printer and hit print, nothing. Other emails will print ok.

These particular emails that don't work are html email, but this is not affecting all html emails. I've been going through my saved emails to see if I get the same issue and all of those print fine (just testing with pdf writer mind you, but if I can get that far it means it will work)

The ultimate solution is: don't print. But that wont really go well with the user. Some people always insist on having to print everything.

I've done some google searching and seems others have seen this issue as well but I found little to no solution. This is a really messed up issue.

 

[jagsrocknfl]

I actually had a similar problem with my girlfriends grandmother computer, I would try to narrow it down more and see what makes it not print. In my case from what I remember I actually had to save the Email to the desktop, then right-click the shortcut and click print. Give it a try and see how it works..

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just tried to remove all printers including the pdf then readded the pdf for testing, no go still.

I tried your idea of putting it on the desktop and it did print. This is really messed up. I'll try to figure out what might be special about that email.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Also it it normal for an email to have so much non human readable content when opening it in notepad? Seems odd, I expected it to look more like a linux mbox format email. It has an xls attachment so I removed it and forwarded it to myself. Same deal. Wont print either.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

How are you trying to print them? Are you selecting it from the inbox view and trying to print from there (because it won't) or are you opening the email and trying to print from file -> print

 

[Red Squirrel]

Opening up the email then file / print or click print icon

I did find out if you set the security level to "restricted" it works, but now the user gets active X warnings when there's signatures with html. ARG I hate Outlook.