I reverted from Office 2008 to Office X (Excel is the only Office app I use.) a coupl'a weeks back, because I got sick of waiting 5-10 secs for it to launch and 11 secs for it to quit, but I just discovered that I can't print; hitting File > Print or command-P causes Excel to crash.

I've tried my test account, Safe Boot, trashing prefs, reinstalling...all with no joy.

Has anybody got any insights, suggestions, incantations?

Thanks.

Update: I just tried and found that I can print from my Leopard volume; I guess maybe Office X is reaching the end of its run?

I don't normally use Excel but I have it in Office 2008 as well as Office X. I just tested both and had no problem printing in OS 10.6.5 although I can confirm your complaint about the slowness of Excel X. Print Therapy has solved some weird problems for me and it has a seven day free trial.

Thanks for letting me know that my problem can maybe be solved, Jon.

I'll try your linked app...can't hurt, but I'll likely wind up trashing most everything Microsoft and reinstalling...all to avoid having to boot into Leopard to generate PDFs. (I have to boot into Leopard to actually print...no updated driver.)

You got it backwards, though; it was Office 2008 that was slow to launch and brutally slow to quit.

Oops! It was really early in the morning and I hadn't had my wake-up dose of caffeine yet. I find that Entourage 2008 launches slowly and quits slowly. Word 2008 launches quickly but quits slowly. My limited use of Excel (only for opening attached Excel documents and printing a test for you) has it launching and quitting quickly. I don't know what would happen if I used it constantly. I have never used Powerpoint.

Addendum... I forgot to mention that I have no trouble printing from apps other than Excel.

If you'll entertain 3 guesses...

1. When you go to print, and the Excel print window appears, asking for number of copies, etc., there is also a dropdown menu that also asks which printer to use.

Try reselecting your printer. (I'm guessing this preference is corrupt.) You may even have to trash all Excel preferences.

2. Verify fonts in Font Book.

3. Do an Excel custom (re)install.

Sorry for the .5assed guesses, but at least they shouldn't hurt.

Thanks for kicking in, Harv.

> 1. When you go to print, and the Excel print window appears, asking for number of copies, etc., there is also a dropdown menu that also asks which printer to use.

Try reselecting your printer. (I'm guessing this preference is corrupt.) You may even have to trash all Excel preferences.

Excel crashes before the print window appears.

> 2. Verify fonts in Font Book.

No help.

> 3. Do an Excel custom (re)install.

Just go done doing that... No joy.

The interesting thing, though, and maybe it will mean something to somebody, is that clicking on the "Print" icon in Excel's toolbar sends the print job directly to my printer without benefit of dialog window.

Just to broaden the potential solution space a bit...

1. Have you tried printing from Excel in a clean test account to see if it works there?
2. Have you tried deleting the printer driver, restarting your computer, and then re-installing the printer? That should very effectively flush all the print queues and cache files in case there is some conflict there.
3. You might also use Cocktail, OnyX, TinkerTool System, or anything else of your choice to flush out all the Microsoft and user cache files.

I just ran Print Therapy with no joy (as expected).

Thanks for the link, though.

> Have you tried deleting the printer driver, restarting your computer, and then re-installing the printer? That should very effectively flush all the print queues and cache files in case there is some conflict there.

Bingo!

Thanks for the suggestion; it never occurred to me to delete my printer (which I was only keeping around for nostalgic reasons, anyhow, since there are no 10.6 drivers for it).

I deleted and restarted, and Excel now responds to command-P as expected.

Is it unusual to run into an issue like this with only one app out of many?

Thanks, again.