Printing Word Online documents...

I have OSX 10.6.8 and Office for Mac and my Adobe Reader is up to date. Lately, Word Online documents either print without full information (I suspect the text box information is not printing) or they convert to blank PDF files when I click PRINT.

I don't know why you mentioned Adobe Reader with your Word document problem as it's not even related, unless you're trying to open a pdf in Word or have Word set to save as pdf.

You need to supply some better clarification for what's happening and what you're actually doing.

Are you downloading the Word documents or whatever you consider "Word Online documents" and do they display correctly when opened and viewed on your monitor display?

Thank you, pm-r for your reply. To clarify, I received attachments in an email that I can view online or download. I click view online and the documents open and display in Word Online. When I click the print feature within Word Online, instead of printing, it converts to a PDF document (a hyperlink appears that says "Your PDF document is ready to view") that I should be able to view and print, but it is blank. I did not set my preferences to do this Word to PDF conversion. I then try to bypass the Word Online print feature using my own computer print feature, the document downloads and again I get a blank document. When I download the document from the email attachment and open it, same result. the Word Online document is displaying properly, but I can't do anything with it. My Husband has a Windows 8 laptop and is able to print these documents without problem. This is only recently a problem for me. I have not had this problem before (perhaps 9 mos. since I needed to print from Word Online). I am not sure what may have changed to cause this and that is why I have come to the Mac Forums, to see if anyone else has had a similar problem and hopefully how they resolved the problem.

To clarify the other problem, I am unable to print fully the documents sent as attachments that include information input in text boxes. It appears the text box information is neither displaying nor printing.

You haven't told us if you have MS Word installed on your computer? If so, which version of Word do you have? Also, when you receive an email with a Word document attached (doc or docx) you should first save it and then print. Word documents can be viewed and printed with TextEdit if you don't have a copy of MS Word.

Thank you for responding chscag. I have MS Office for Mac 2008. With these attachments, I have the option to view online or download or download all as zip from Outlook. I just tried to save before opening using the mail app on my Mac, when I opened the saved document, it was blank as before. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. All updates are current.

You should have no problem viewing Word documents either on line or after saving them to your computer if you have Office 2008. It may be the way the documents are being sent if your husband can read them OK from Windows and you can't. What file format are the documents using? doc? docx? I just noticed that you're trying to save them from Outlook and that may be the reason.

Thanks again, chscag. I just took another look at the attachments. They are actually PDF files and when you click view online they come up displayed in Word Online. I have no trouble viewing them, only when trying to print, or view them after downloading or saving them. They are consistently blank in all cases except viewing online. I am stumped. I have not had this problem before. I am now wondering if it does have something to do with the original documents or the way they are being sent as you mentioned.

That's a bit different. Any PDF documents should be able to open, be readable, and print from the "Preview" Application on your Mac. It doesn't matter if they're on line or downloaded. There is one thing that can mess it up, and that is if you have installed the Adobe viewer. If you have, Adobe sets itself up as the default and many times causes the problems you're encountering. It also installs a "plug in" to Safari that again can interfere with reading PDF attachments. So, if you have installed Adobe, uninstall it and allow Preview to once more become the default viewer. That should resolve the problem. The reason your husband can view them is because Adobe works very well in Windows.

Thanks for the Adobe Viewer uninstall advice. I may have installed that as part of an update. I will try that.

Problem resolved! The initial information on my problem was not complete or accurate as it turns out. The attachments were not Word documents, but PDF documents that, when viewed online, displayed in Word Online. Chscag's advice lead me to look at my Adobe apps. I did not have Adobe Viewer, but only Adobe Reader (not the same thing, is it?). However, when I clicked on the Adobe Reader (AR) app, a message pops up that says I do not have AR set as my default to read PDF files, do I want to make it my default instead of Preview. I had never seen this before and Preview has never failed me before. I just took a chance and said yes. Now all my attachments display completely and print properly. I can only guess that the latest Adobe/PDF products do not agree with Mac's Preview for some reason. I thank you all and I LOVE this forum!

I'm glad to read that you got it all sorted out, and I'd suggest you keep using Adobe Reader with your OS 10.6.8, as I found Preview didn't always display pdf files correctly, and it's plugin can often make viewing quicker and easier.

But keep Adobe Reader updated, which it will normally do with its updater and let you know there's an update available. And best to do so for fixes and updated security.

Just the opposite here. I've only run into one site that actually required using Adobe Reader instead of Preview, and that was a State of Texas Business Tax site. I had to download several documents for our non profit business and it wouldn't allow me to download with Preview. I had to use Adobe. Other than that, I'll take Preview over Adobe any day, anywhere. In Windows, the Adobe Reader is bloat ware leading many folks to no longer use it. The free Foxit Reader runs circles around it.