printing A3 problems (XP)

[lizat]

Dear Longers,

I have a Canon i6500 colour deskjet printer this takes A4 & A3. A spreadsheet that I have previously printed successfully now prints all smudgy as though it is printing in several position on the paper, the document is configured to A3 and has grid lines. A similar sheet also won't (now) print properly. A4 excel sheets seem to be OK. Even worse the "messy" sheet, when configured to print A4 does so successfully. I have done all the printer head alignment, nozzle cleaning etc but to no avail, have just tried creating a new file, this prints Ok if it's A4 portrait or landscape, A3 portrait but A3 landscape is a mess. perhaps it's the driver but I've reinstalled this.......................... any ideas

thank you....................... liz

[sdckapr]

Have you tried increasing the "Print Quality" in page setup?

Steve

[lizat]

Steve,

Hadn't tried it as it's at 600 dpi and the file had printed successfully before, also the new file I created had the same problems although this was only a small amount of detail. So I tried it just now... no luck it's very odd the header which is one line prints part of the line and then part of it is is sort of super-scrpted and above the line, what you don't see because of the top margin but shows clearly on the footer is that it is printing some of the information a second time above the expected location, for example:
.... this line in faint print: k1 pr
.... this line in black book1 produced 21 June 2004

and I think other things are more complex than that, they seem to be rpoduced seevral times and misaligned. and it is only behaving like this for A3 landcsape

liz

[LegareColeman]

Have you checked the cannon web site to see if they have an updated driver available.

[sdckapr]

Does this problem occur with other workbooks or worksheets that print to A3 or only this one?

Steve

[lizat]

Problem identified & solved:

This model of canon seems particularly sensitive and the feed mechnaism is very touchy. It has turned out that "playing" with and repositioning the paper thickness lever has removed the problem - although it must have been a coincidence that it always failed on A3 landscape, a bit spooky as I could reproduce it consistently with any file I created and printed in differnet ways. Since I can now consistently not reproduce the problem I have to conclude that this was it.

Generally this printer is too sensitive and often misfeeds paper, especially 80gsm whcih, of course, is what we generally use!

Thank you for all the suggestions