Publication printing jobs disappear from and then reappear in print queue in Publisher 2007 and in Publisher 2003

If you print a publication from Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 or from Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 as composite cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK) or as color separations and watch the print queue from Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows 2000, the print job seems to disappear and then, after a period of time, reappear. The more complex the publication, the longer it takes for the print job to reappear.

This appearance and reappearance may cause problems with certain third-party programs or workflows.

This behavior occurs because of how Publisher prints to PostScript printers. When you print from Publisher as composite CMYK or color separations, the following sequence of events occurs:

• Publisher uses the Windows XP or Windows 2000 PostScript printer driver to create a spool file. During this time the print job shows up in the Windows print queue.
• After the spool file is created, Publisher modifies the PostScript code in the spool file. While this process is going on, the print job does not appear in the Windows print queue.
• After Publisher completes modifying the spool file, it resubmits the print job to the print queue. At this point, the print job reappears in the Windows print queue.

To work around this behavior, especially if this issue causes a problem with your third-party programs or workflows, print your publication as a PostScript file.

When you create a PostScript file from Publisher, it completes its modifying of the spool file, and then writes the spool file to your hard disk as a PostScript file. This PostScript file is not resubmitted to the print queue.