# Word hanging when printing



## bobg19 (Mar 4, 2005)

I am using Word 2002 with Windows XP. When I try to print any Word document, a message appears at the bottom of the screen that says something like "Word is background printing the document". Several small solid blue boxes appear next to this message. However, that's all that happens. The PC freezes, and only Cntrl-Alt-Delete and Task Manager get me unfrozen. I never get to Print Preview. The same thing happened when I tried to print from Notepad. 

I have been using this computer, printer and software for several years. All worked fine until yesterday, when this problem first developed. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Bob


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## Ashler (May 19, 2005)

See if this helps:
Normally, Microsoft Word 2003 prints documents in the background. This means that as the document is being printed, you can continue editing or viewing the same or other documents. The downside to this feature is that printing may be slowed since your computer is multitasking, and more memory is required to handle this procedure.

If you are printing larger documents that need to be finished in a hurry, or if you have a computer with a low amount of memory that seems to drag whenever you print documents from within Word 2003, you can optionally turn this feature off.

1. Click "Tools" - "Options".

2. When the "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the "Print" tab.

3. Uncheck "Background printing".

4. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.


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