Fix Print Problems

Print problems are typically caused by either a missing, corrupted, out-of-date, or misconfigured printer driver (or LAN print server/spooler), or by nonstandard printer default settings or fonts. The preview and print functions in CTI Navigator depend entirely on the printer driver installed as the default in your Windows. Reports depend on your printer's default settings to be normal formats (letter size, portrait layout) and normal fonts (Windows standard Arial). In Windows XP, you must install a print driver before you can preview reports correctly (even if a printer is not attached to the computer).

You can check the Windows default printer and its settings directly in the Windows Control Panel > Printers and Faxes. To verify that the printer driver is active, right-click on the default printer > select Properties > click Test Print Page (or print from another Windows application such as Word or WordPad). Click Printing Preferences to verify that the default printer is the correct name and that it is set to letter size paper, portrait orientation, main or default tray. In the Select Report screen of CTI Navigator you also can display the default printer settings in Windows by selecting the "Setup" button above the Preview button. If the default print driver is not correct or one of the printer's default settings is non-standard (such as legal, landscape, postcard, banner, etc), MLS reports cannot print correctly.

Note: when setting up a network printer in Windows Vista, let Windows locate the printer on the network and add its IP address. If you browse to install a network a printer and manually enter its URL (alphabetic) address rather than its IP (numeric) address, MLS reports may not get routed correctly to the network printer (they may just disappear).

To download the latest driver for your model of printer, go to the printer manufacturer's website. Most manufacturer's have a site with their name (www.{brother, dell, epson, hp, lexmark, or xerox}.com - although Canon's is www.usa.canon.com). If you don't know your printer's model, some of the generic driver site's have programs to detect it (such as www.drivershq.com, www.driverzone.com). If you are printing over a local area network, have the network administrator ensure that the latest print drivers are installed for that specific model of printer and for your version of Windows.

MLS Reports are formatted to use the Windows standard Arial TrueType fonts. (The CTI Navigator program itself needs Windows to provide the standard Courier New TrueType fonts and the MS Sans Serif fonts.) All of these are standard fonts included in every installation of Windows, so these fonts are not installed (or replaced) by CTI Navigator. If customized or corrupted versions of these fonts have replaced the original from Microsoft, MLS reports cannot print correctly. See Microsoft's instructions on reinstalling the standard fonts included in Windows under Related Articles below. You will need your Microsoft Windows installation disk to restore the standard fonts using Windows Setup as described in this article.

Sometimes other programs send special print commands to the printer that stay in memory (i.e., the printer does not return to its default settings). Selecting Print from the MLS report Preview screen (rather than printing directly from the Search Results table) can help ensure that the default printer driver with its default settings are activated in Windows. You also can use the interactive Report Display icon on the data table to instantly preview reports as each listing is selected in the table (see description of the Report Display Icon in the Data Table Overview section of CTI Navigator Help).

It also is possible that printing is a memory management issue in Windows or the printer itself. Try closing all programs except CTI Navigator, turn the printer off and back on (to flush its memory) and then print MLS reports without selecting Preview.

Scanners may reserve specific sections of memory exclusively for us by the scanner. If you have a scanner attached to your computer, try inactivating the scanner's memory management program before printing MLS reports.

If re-installing your printer driver does not fix the problem, you may need to adjust the margins for output to your printer. To change the printer margins, in CTI Navigator select File > Options > Printer Margin Offsets.

Printer margin adjustments are in pixels. There are approximately 1,440 pixels in one inch. Therefore a one-eighth inch adjustment would be 180 pixels, one-quarter inch would be 360 pixels. The value entered is added to the existing default margin. Entering a positive value makes the margin wider (i.e., printing starts further away from the edge of the paper). Entering a negative value reduces the width of the margin (i.e., text prints closer to the edge of the paper).

Printers differ in how close they can print to the edge of a sheet of paper. Reducing the width of the margin (by entering a negative offset value) assumes that your printer can actually print as close to the edge of the paper as you specify. You may need to experiment with several values to determine the pixel adjustment appropriate for your printer.

Example margin adjustments are:

If the bottom line of your MLS reports print on a second page rather than on the same page as the rest of the report, raise the bottom margin one-quarter inch by entering 360 beside Bottom.

If the top of your MLS reports are missing text, widen the top margin one-eighth of an inch by entering 180 beside Top.

To lower the bottom margin by one-quarter inch enter -360 (with a minus sign) beside Bottom.

To move the top line one-eighth inch further up toward the top edge, enter -180 (with a minus sign) beside Top.

Most printers work correctly with the default print settings and do not need printer margin offsets.

To return to CTI's Menu of Error Fixes, click here or use the back arrow at the top of your Internet browser.

rev.06.11.08