Characters appear as square boxes in printed document in Word 97

If you print a document that contains extended characters, such as Greek symbols, to certain printers using printer drivers that do not accept Unicode characters, the extended characters are printed as square boxes, even though they are displayed correctly on the screen.

The problem affects the following printers and printer drivers:

• Canon BubbleJet BJ-C600, 4000, 4200, 4500, 4550, v 3.40
• Canon Multipass 2500 3.40
• Epson Color 500
• Epson Stylus Color, v 2.x
• Epson Stylus Pro / XL v. 2.11BE
• HP Color LaserJet 5 PCL, printer driver version F 1.300
• HP DeskJet 1600C, printer driver version 4.20
• HP LaserJet 4 PCL, printer driver version 3.78
• HP LaserJet 6P, standard printer driver
• Okidata 4 laser printer

This problem occurs because these printer drivers do not provide support for Unicode characters.

To work around this problem, use any of the following methods.

Method 1: Set a Print Flag

Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.
There is a flag (registry setting) for the printer driver that causes it to use American National Standards Institute (ANSI) character layout functions instead of Unicode character layout functions. When set correctly, this flag allows the printer driver to print the extended characters correctly.

To set this flag, use the method appropriate for your version of Word.

Microsoft Word 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1)

If you have installed Microsoft Word 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1), you can set one registry entry that applies to all installed printers. If you have the original (non-SR1) version of Word 97, see the "Word 97 (Non-SR1) Version" section later in this article instead.

To set the registry entry, follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry key:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Word\Options
4. Double-click the Options key to open it.
5. With the Options key selected, on the Edit menu, point to New and click String Value.
6. In the right pane, type NoWideTextPrinting, and press ENTER.
7. With NoWideTextPrinting selected, on the Edit menu, click Modify.
8. In the Value Data box, type the value 1 and click OK.
9. On the Registry menu, click Exit, and then restart Word.

For more informationabout SR-1, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Word 97 (Non-SR1) Version

If you have not yet installed Word 97 Service Release 1, but have the original (non-SR1) version of Word 97, follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry key:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Word
4. Double-click the Word key to open it.
5. Under the Word key, click to select your printer name.
   
   NOTE: If your printer name is not displayed under the Word key, then follow these steps:
   1. On the Registry menu, click Exit.
   2. Start Word.
   3. On the File menu, click Print. Under Printer, select your printer in the Name list, and then click Close (the "X" on the right side of the title bar). If the appropriate printer is already selected, then click Cancel.
   4. On the Tools menu, click Options.
   5. Click the Print tab, and then click OK.
   6. Start method 1 again at step 1.
6. With the printer key selected, on the Edit menu, point to New, and click String Value.
7. In the right pane, type Flags, and press ENTER.
8. With Flags selected, on the Edit menu, click Modify.
9. In the Value box, type 8192 and click OK.

The printer should now print the extended characters correctly.

Method 2: Printer-Specific Workarounds

The following information describes workarounds that are available for specific printer drivers.

NOTE: Not all printer drivers have a specific workaround (in this case, method 1 is the only available workaround).

HP DeskJet 1600C

To work around this problem, follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Printers.
2. Click the HP DeskJet 1600C ColorSmart printer icon.
3. On the File menu, click Properties.
4. In the HP DeskJet 1600C ColorSmart Properties dialog box, click the Details tab, and then click Setup.
5. In the ColorSmart Setup dialog box, click Advanced.
6. In the Advanced dialog box, select Use LaserJet III font scaling and click OK to close each of the open dialog boxes.

HP LaserJet 4 Series PCL

To work around this problem, follow these steps:

1. On the Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Printers.
2. Click the HP LaserJet 4 printer icon.
3. On the File menu, click Properties.
4. From the HP LaserJet 4 Properties dialog box, click the Fonts tab.
5. In the Fonts dialog box, under TrueType fonts, select Print TrueType as graphics and click OK.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

ASCII characters are represented by the values 0 to 127; ANSI includes ASCII but adds characters 128 through 255. In all languages, the ASCII characters are exactly the same, but characters 128-255 are used for characters specific to a language, based on the code page associated with the language. This approach handles the character differences for most languages in the world.

Some languages (specifically, East Asian languages such as Japanese Kanji, several dialects of Chinese, and Korean) cannot be represented with only 256 characters. The written characters in these languages are entire words rather than individual letters, so there are typically over 6000 different characters.

Unicode was introduced to handle these languages. Unicode uses two bytes per character, instead of the standard one byte per character.

For more information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For more information about this issue in Microsoft Excel, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.
For information about how to contact your printer manufacturer, click the appropriate article number in the following list to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Microsoft Support Options

If you cannot resolve this issue, several support options are available to assist you.

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Microsoft Product Support

Contact a Microsoft Product Support professional to assist you with troubleshooting problems.

For more information about obtaining help with troubleshooting Microsoft Windows, click Help Topics on the Help menu in Windows Explorer. On the Contents tab, double-click to open the Troubleshooting book. Then double-click to open the Contact Microsoft Technical Support book to view your support options.

For more information about obtaining help with troubleshooting Microsoft Word, click About Microsoft word on the Help menu, and then click Tech Support.

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