Printer Won't Print Microsoft Publisher Documents Correctly

by Elizabeth Mott

Microsoft Publisher can produce intricate page layouts and graphic designs that incorporate spot or process color, CMYK photos, metallic inks and other advanced printing features. If you're trying to print a Publisher project on your desktop hardware, either to create final output or to proof a project you're sending to a commercial printer, you want your project to emerge looking like your onscreen design. To diagnose printing problems involving Publisher, look at what you're printing and how you're printing it.

Composites Vs. Separations

When you print your Microsoft Publisher document on a color output device, you expect to see color pages emerge from the printer. If you see a sequence of black and white pages that contain parts of the content for each page, you've accidentally triggered the software to print separations instead of composites. Separations support the needs of printing presses, which subdivide the color content of your files into a series of primary inks that combine to produce the illusion of color photos. To correct this problem on your desktop printer, turn off the advanced print setting that produces separations.


Printing envelopes can involve multiple challenges, including the need to select media with flap styles and adhesives that your hardware can handle without damaging either the printer or your supplies. If the driver software that enables your printer and computer to communicate lacks support for the specific envelope size you want to print, you may be able to create a custom size to accommodate your chosen stock, but some printer drivers lack support for custom sizes. When you plan to print envelopes from Microsoft Publisher to your desktop output device, plan ahead by verifying that your driver supports the size you want to use. If it doesn't, select a supported size or print your project on another device.


If your Microsoft Publisher file contains large graphics prepared in high-resolution files, your document printing problems may point to your hardware as the cause, not your document. In these cases, your images may print partially or not at all. Large bitmaps require more memory to print than smaller versions do. If you need to use a large file at a much smaller size than its actual dimensions, your computer and printer must process more data than your output requires. In these cases, you can create a scaled-down version of your photo in your image-editing application and use it instead of the original.

Unprintable Area Vs. Bleed

When you create layouts that use photos, graphics or areas of solid color that extend all the way to the edge of the sheet of paper, you won't be able to print your work as it appears in your Microsoft Publisher file without generating it on a larger sheet size and trimming off the excess paper to reach your final dimensions. A project like this involves a design technique called "bleed," which requires that your material extend beyond the final size of your document and be cut away to present the illusion that the ink stops exactly at the edge of the page. Additionally, desktop printers leave at least some white space around the outer edges of the paper when they print, in part because they must leave some of the sheet for the hardware's use in gripping and moving the output media through the device.

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