Printer problem help please

Any help would be appreciated.... this is not for me, its for a friend. He's not particularly computer savvy, but he can't print an email.

Its about his pension, from the Gov.uk website here in the UK, he says he can print normal emails normal emails.

I haven't been round his house to have a look.

Is there any reason why the gov.uk might block the printing of emails ? All suggestions welcome and as I said it could be a straightforward thing that he doesn't see. Thank you

NE5, do we have any specific details on what happens when he tries to print this particular document?

The March Windows updates had some pretty nasty bugs related to printing, but it didn't effect every every type of printer so there are some things we could try to see if this is the cause of the problem.

First, when trying to print the document, rather than printing to the default printer, after selecting "print" he should be able to select another printer. Try selecting the "Microsoft print to PDF" option. If that works, then we know know that the e-mail can at least be printed to some print devices. In that case, try printing to another device if one is available. You could also print to a PDF as noted above, take that PDF to another location where other printers are available and try printing to those printers from the PDF file.

If that is not an option, and printing to PDF did not work, you might try uninstalling the March Cumulative Update for Windows to see if that resolves the issue. NOTE: April updates were just released yesterday, but I don't know if that included fixes for the March problems.

Finally, is it possible to simply copy and paste the contents of this e-mail into another program such as Microsoft Word and then maybe trying to print from that app?

Hopefully between all this, something works!

hsehestedt said:

NOTE: April updates were just released yesterday, but I don't know if that included fixes for the March problems.

the April 2021 updates for all supported Win10 versions do include the printing fixes from the out-of-band updates released in late March, hsehestedt

erpster4 said:

the April 2021 updates for all supported Win10 versions do include the printing fixes from the out-of-band updates released in late March, hsehestedt

Thanks for that.

hsehestedt said:

NE5, do we have any specific details on what happens when he tries to print this particular document?

The March Windows updates had some pretty nasty bugs related to printing, but it didn't effect every every type of printer so there are some things we could try to see if this is the cause of the problem.

First, when trying to print the document, rather than printing to the default printer, after selecting "print" he should be able to select another printer. Try selecting the "Microsoft print to PDF" option. If that works, then we know know that the e-mail can at least be printed to some print devices. In that case, try printing to another device if one is available. You could also print to a PDF as noted above, take that PDF to another location where other printers are available and try printing to those printers from the PDF file.

If that is not an option, and printing to PDF did not work, you might try uninstalling the March Cumulative Update for Windows to see if that resolves the issue. NOTE: April updates were just released yesterday, but I don't know if that included fixes for the March problems.

Finally, is it possible to simply copy and paste the contents of this e-mail into another program such as Microsoft Word and then maybe trying to print from that app?

Hopefully between all this, something works!

thanks mate, I've passed it on and told him to wait for the April update.

He's not really that savvy, or inclined towards this, if he wanted it I would have to go over to his and copy it into a word document. He's adamant that printing other documents is fine, I wondered if for some reason the UK govt would be blocking the ability to print e mails, or he had been hacked.

We'll wait for the update for the moment.

hsehestedt said:

Thanks for that.

realize that many or most Win10 updates are cumulative, and so the printer bugfixes that were found in the late March 2021 updates (like KB5001567, KB5001649 & KB5000842 for Win10 2004/20H2) are included in the current and future updates

erpster4 said:

realize that many or most Win10 updates are cumulative, and so the printer bugfixes that were found in the late March 2021 updates (like KB5001567, KB5001649 & KB5000842 for Win10 2004/20H2) are included in the current and future updates

But the point is that what was in the March updates were buggy. So the April update supersedes that and fixes what MS broke in March.