WD2000: Gray Drawing Layer Lines Printed in Black on HP LaserJet

When you create a gray-colored line for a drawing object (by using the tools on the Drawing toolbar), the line may be printed in black on Hewlett-Packard (HP) LaserJet series printers.

This behavior occurs with circles, ellipses, squares, arcs, freeform objects, and autoshapes.

Word sends correct gray color instructions to the printer driver, which means that Word is not responsible for this behavior.

Some versions of the HP LaserJet Series printer drivers translate gray color formatting to black printer instructions for all shapes except the ellipse.

Specifically, when a non-ellipse is formatted as gray, the printer driver sends a NULL brush and solid pen (pen width = 0) instruction, which tells the printer to print in black instead of gray. In contrast, for a gray- colored ellipse, the printer driver sends a brush instruction that corresponds to the Windows Universal Printer Driver (Unidrv.dll) instruction for dithered solid red color, which the HP LaserJet printer prints as gray.

This problem may occur with the following printers:

• HP LaserJet
• HP LaserJet II
• HP LaserJet IIp+
• HP LaserJet III
• HP LaserJet IIIp
• HP LaserJet IIIsi
• HP LaserJet 4M/4P (HPPCL5E.DRV version 1.27)
• HP LaserJet 4si (HPPCL5E.DRV version 1.27)
• HP LaserJet 4si MX (HPPCL5E.DRV version 1.27)
• HP LaserJet 4si version 3.78 (Windows 95 printer driver)

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

Method 1: Create an Object That Uses a Gray Fill

Depending on the type of drawing object needed, it may be possible to create the object that uses a gray fill, but to which you do not add a line color. Gray-colored objects fill print correctly. For example, to create a gray-colored line, create instead a narrow rectangle that has no lines and that uses a gray fill.

Method 2: Use a PostScript Printer Driver

If your printer supports PostScript, use a PostScript printer driver.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Word 2000.

The third-party products that are discussed in this article are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.