She was trying to get an Excel file to fit on a single page. Opened in Numbers, of course, disregarded most of the font and macro warnings. She
finally came to me to have me show her again how to make a column narrower.
The problem there was that the cursor needs fairly precise and slow movement in exactly the correct place in order to see the change in the cursor style. BTW, her cursor now has a new name: "Stupid!"
She then managed to make some kind of command that made the last few columns have different heading titles; Zip codes was now labeled States, addresses were now labeled Zip code, etc., etc. That's when a terrifying thought hit me between the eyes; both Lions now use an auto-save function! I quickly Quit Numbers hoping that I could find the original files. Only now do I remember that there is also something called "Revert"? Since it's too late for that, I simply copied and pasted the data in the proper columns. Minor problem solved.
File one was small, fit on a single side of a letter-sized sheet of paper. "Print 1 to 1" Done. Fini.
File two had a few lines that end up on a second sheet of paper. "Print 1 to 2, Duplex" ... waiting ... waiting ... waiting some more ... printer is completely silent.
Check the Printer status. Shows 'Printing.' Still nothing happening at the printer. After a few cups of coffee, I astutely decide that there is a printing problem!
Double-check Print & Scan panel, looks normal. Turn printer OFF/ON. No change. Create a tiny TextEdit file. It won't print either. Problem is not Numbers!
Drastic actions required! Delete the laser printer. Add it back. No help.
Remembered something about a Reset printer system. Google same. "Control-click the
A printer in the list on the Print & FAX (Old name) panel." Great!
Reopen the panel, the other printer happens to be selected. Control-clicked the 'problem' printer and get the "Are you sure you want to reset the printer system" dialog. Click "OK." Dialog disappears. Now I click the 'problem' printer and do the control-click action, again. Bad move. This causes the System Prefs to "Stop responding!"
Lesson one: You only need to do one "Printer Reset" action, no matter how many printers you might have. The "
A" in the instructions should have been followed by "ny."
Force Quit System Prefs. Restart System Prefs, select Print & Scan. No printers listed. No problem, I wanted to start afresh, anyway. Click the "plus" button. Select the 'problem' printer and no drivers can be found. Nor was there any list of drivers! "
Reset" was beginning to take on a whole new meaning!
A Restart helped get things back into the Printers and Drivers lists. However, I found there were two drivers offered for the 'problem' printer. I selected the first one and was told it needed to be updated. After a few moments of spinning gears and claims of updating, I was presented with a message that the update had failed. I then selected the second, duplicately named driver and proceeded to install/add the printer.
The same procedure was used for the other printer which did not offer duplicate drivers. Both printers are now working.
BTW, drivers had been updated via SU/MAS last week (reinforcing my previous policy of
not updating printer s/w as long as current versions worked!
).
Bigger problems are lurking, however! During the above operations, I discovered my iMac (which is doing the Printer Sharing) had gone into some kind of deep sleep/blank screen/non-responsive mode. Hard shutdown required! Details later. New DiskWarrior DVD ordered. Can't update the old one since the machine and OS have changed. $21.95 including first class mail. No sooner than Monday... I'm betting Tuesday.
I gotta go...
