Slow Printing

[drcraig232]

A very simple report -- 1 page with 1 header, 1 subheader, 3 data lines, 1 total line, and bottom line with "Page 1 of 1" -- takes 4 to 5 minutes to print! (And this with only 4 columns.) At this rate a fully populated report with 5 or 6 pages might take all morning. I tried to find out if it was printing in some super-top-quality mode that I could scale back to draft mode, but I couldn't find where that setting might be hiding. The report certainly looks like it was overprinting each line quite a few times to produce a top-notch look. Anyone have any clues to how I might reduce this back to normal printing and get this closer to 10 seconds or so? TIA

Don Craig

[Ken]

Very strange -- hard to know if it a printer driver issue or something else, but I have a not to our devs to see if they have any ideas.

Easy workaround -- Open your report and go to File > Save As External and save your report as a PDF. A one-pager should save in a second or two (though super long reports could take a bit of time to process). Then, just open the PDF and print from there.

Best,
ken

[drcraig232]

I just logged on to tell you that I had found a workaround -- save to PDF and print the PDF which does indeed print normally. I was hoping there was a setting buried somewhere that set the print mode to something like draft quality,normal print, or top quality print -- and that it would be easy to turn to draft mode until I needed to send out a report. Let me know if someone has an idea. Tomorrow I'll go to HP website to see if there is an updated driver available, just in case. But this is the first time in years that I've had a problem with printing.

Don.

[drcraig232]

New today 3/7/12:

Downloaded new printer driver from HP and installed. Ran another test print. 3-line report printed from the File > Print menu: 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Save as PDF. Open PDF and print. Print time 10 seconds. Compared output: not much difference. Although I can hear the print mechanism repeat a few times without a line feed with the direct print - there does not seem to be much if any difference on the page (but I am using routine paper not special fancy presentation mode stuff). From the PDF menu options I was able to see the output mode which was set to Normal. Did not find any way to see that page by using your File > Print choice.

This is an OK workaround, but I am hoping for some way to print directly from Strata without going through the PDF mode.

Thanks

Don.

[Ken]

Hi Don,

Talked with our devs and it is almost impossible to tell why your printer in particular is having this problem. We've tested on multiple printers/brands without issue. We're using standard OS printer functions here to push the information to the printer.

I'm curious if you could do a dummy table (create a table with 3 records and 3 fields) and then print a report from that (just straight, no groups, etc.) and see if you get the same problem.

Best,
ken

[drcraig232]

Three records, three fields, no headings, footings, groupings, anything. Took about 60 seconds with at least 20 passes of the inkjet head back and forth before I hear a line feed. I did find the preference button of the print dialogue box and set the print type to normal before clicking print. Having found the preference button, I went back to my original report and set it to fast draft, but no change -- at least 20 passes of the print head before a line advance. For the record, my printer is HP Deskjet F380 All-in-one. I'm stumped, in two+ decades of PC work, both professionally and personally, I have never seen anything like this.

Thanks for all your efforts. I'm still leaning towards buying the product at the end of my free trial. It is a nuisance to create PDFs and then print, but it's only a minor one.

Don.

[drcraig232]

More about my environment: I'm running a Sony VAIO Laptop new in Jan 2012. It came installed with Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64 bit. Originally I used whatever driver Windows found when I set up the laptop and that was what was running when I first stumbled onto the problem. Early this week I went to the HP site and downloaded the latest driver for the F380 but the problem persists.

Don.

[Ken]

Hi Don,

Unfortunately, this is going to be a dead end. The printer seems to think it needs to print over the same line multiple times as if the report was a photo or something... but there isn't any way that our developers can identify that issue for your specific hardware/OS combo. I apologize for the extra work involved with the PDF creation.

Sorry about that,
ken