MS office 2004 printing causes crash

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So I have a nasty print issue on a Mac running OS 10.4. I 'think' I know what's causing it but I could be wrong.

Basics:
OS 10.4 (don't have version num in front of me)
MS Office 2004
Canon MP160 printer

Problem:
When you print from either MS Word or MS Excel, it kills the entire application and you lose anything you were working on. Example: I have a document up that I choose 'File -> Print' for. The dialog box pops up but only briefly and then it kills the entire application and gives me a ridiculously long and useless error message. Printing works EVERYWHERE else - we're talking MS Entourage, acrobat, safari, you name it...

What I have done thus far:
-the standard stuff including reboot (silly but of course)
-removed all the preferences for MS office and restarted the applications
-reinstalled the print drivers
-attempted to install the latest MS Office update (more on that later)

What I 'think':
-goes without saying I could be wrong - the reason I think this is that it gives you the little twirling 'wait' feature common to the Mac as though its looking for that thumbnail image but not finding it only briefly before the entire app shuts down. Other print functions on the computer that work do not have this handy 'feature'.
-the 'quick preview' function of the print screen is causing this. If you go to print in either Excel or Word, there's a largely useless feature that gives you a 'quick preview' of the page. However, you can disable this 'feature' by clicking on a check box below the image. That said, it kills the entire application so quickly, I cannot 'uncheck' the box and, from what I understand, it only refers to the next time you bring up the print dialog.
-I have looked for ways to disable this 'feature' by another manner but have been unsuccessful.

Where it gets weird:
-Nothing that MS office needs to install or remove works. I.e. - if you attempt to install the most recent update to Office 2004 (I believe 11.5.9 or something), it SIMPLY WILL NOT WORK. It finds the update, says its installing but then when you click 'check for updates', voila! There it is again...

Before I haul this thing off to a genius bar and give up my day - any thoughts?
 
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Location
Amberley, Canterbury, New Zealand
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
First thing - Save before you try to print. For a while, going back to MS Word 98, I got caught out by not doing that.

Second - I suspect something's wrong with Permissions. Repair, preferably using OnyX Titanium's Software • Download.

Third - if the problem persists, try reinstalling MSOffice - but remove ALL the old parts first. If there's no Uninstaller in the MSO folder, use a third-party app like CleanApp, or AppCleaner.

Last - and this has worked for others, not sure why - try using a different route to the Print function, eg. click the little printer icon in the Word/Excel menu bar, or press Cmd-P from the keyboard.
 
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M
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thank you!

Will give it a shot and report back... Permissions does sound like it could be an issue although its annoying that it could be given that there is only one user on this machine.
 

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