Why is my Current Printer unavailable in Office ?

Posted by cros on Super User See other posts from Super User or by cros
Published on 2009-08-04T12:42:45Z Indexed on 2010/03/13 0:07 UTC
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Whenever I try to print any document from Microsoft Office 2007 in Windows Vista 64-bit there is a great possibility that the print job will fail with the following error message:

Current printer is unavailable. Select another printer.

Only problem is no printer works, not even Bullzip PDF Printer.

The only way to resolve this that I have found so far is a reboot, but I don't want to do that all the time.

I am using Windows Vista 64-bit. I've had the problem using both SP1 and SP2. The problem occurs on both locally installed and network printers, as well as the virtual printer Bullzip PDF Printer. My primary source of the problem has been Excel, but the error has also occurred in Word.

Changing the default printer and restarting the Microsoft Office-application solves this temporarily, but not permanently. Google:ing the error message returns a lot of questions but no solutions, so seems like a frequent problem.

What could be a permanent solution for this problem?

UPDATE: It seems that my problem stems from me opening MS Office applications by opening a document from Total Commander with administrative rights. This somehow makes the applications not find the printers. Opening MS Office applications either from the Start menu or by opening a document in a non-administrator Explorer allows me to print.

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