IE Page Doesn't Print as Displayed

Unfortunately I'm in Ohio and she's in Florida, so I can't hardly see what's printing.  She admits that it displays fine on the screen and she did fax me the printed copy and it's definitely not printing certain pieces of information.  I explain that if it displays on the screen, then I've done my part and going from her IE session to the printer is all within her control and between her computer and printer.  Am I wrong to assume that?  I have a couple hundred other users on this same app every day and NO ONE else has ever complained about this particular issue and believe me I'm sure they would if it was a problem!

She says she has three printers connected to multiple computers in her office and my app is the only one doing this... so I'm really in need of suggestions here.

What browser/version and OS is she using?

How is she print-screening? Or is she using the "Print" button/menu option?

Can she send the results to a different printer?

Can you connect to her via Terminal Server or GotoMeeting or some other means? Perhaps if you could see what she sees it would help you figure it out?

I've asked her these questions but not heard back from her yet.  She says she's printing to several different network printers.  One minute she says it prints fine and the next minute it doesn't print properly.  I've printed the same exact page that she's printing to my own network printers and have never had an issue.  I'm thinking she is on a PC using IE and she uses the PRINT option from the IE browser menu.  That's exactly what I'm doing and the ones she has scanned and sent to me show the default url and date in the footer of the page along with the page numbers in the upper right.

If I issue a print preview on the page and it displays properly, where would it change when it prints?  She always says it displays just fine on the screen.   I don't have anything in the app that even attempts to control a printer - I didn't think I could and it wouldn't do me any good because each user has different printers.

Without knowing exactly what she is talking about, it is difficult to find a solution for it.  Ask her to "fax" you what she prints (or not print).

I'll bet once you see it, you will know exactly what it is.

She has sent me a copy and what I'm seeing is really amazing - there are characters in there that don't belong, periods in place of commas, line breaks in the wrong places.  It really is out of whack and I can't pinpoint anything.  It would be different if I had others complaining.

Does anyone know if a printer driver reinstall/upgrade would help?  I've asked her to do that and she refuses saying it would be a waste of her time and it's my responsibility.  I figured it was my responsibility to get it to display on the screen and from that point it's her responsibility to get her printer to print it properly.  I'd really like to help her, but I don't have a clue how!

Can you connect to her via Terminal Server or GotoMeeting or some other means? Perhaps if you could see what she sees it would help you figure it out?

Random characters can mean many things:

Bad driver?  Maybe.  But not likely.

Let's start from the top.  Can she print anything else?  How about print a web page like Yahoo or Google search results.  

If she can't print them either, than the problem is not your ASP, it is her printer.

Here are some possibilities:

Bad cable.
Bad printer (more specifically bad printer memory or circuit)
Virus/Malware.

What I meant to say was that ask her to send you a print out from Yahoo, MSN, or CNN page and fax it to you so you can see for it yourself.   Sometimes a client may want you to fix her problem.

Just thought of something else, does your asp page sets the default character set?  I wonder if the browser was set in a different character set (Spanish, Russian, or something else).

She managed to print all day yesterday without any issues.  Now keep in mind that I changed nothing in my .asp page.  She claims that she has two different printers and sometimes it just doesn't want to print certain parts of the page to her printers.  She prints to a Lexmark X7170 for the actual "client copies" so that they look nice on her letterhead and then she prints to a Brother MFC 7420 for her b&w copy to keep.

I have asked about her printing anything else to those printers and she tells me that the only thing that doesn't print properly is my page.  She has said that this began a couple of months ago.  I haven't changed anything at all and yet she claims it's my issue.

So when her printer starts acting up again, I need her to go to Yahoo and print the home page and see if everything prints fine from there.  Since it's so random for her, my luck, it will print as it should!  I'll tell her to do that but she'll tell me that it's wasting her time and ink/paper.  She is very nasty and has the attitude that she is my customer and the customer is always right (she actually told me so).  I generally agree with that philosophy, but I'm having a real tough time with this one.  She is using IE on a PC.

I simply need to get this gal to understand that what happens between her computer and her printer has nothing to do with my pages.  I don't set any character sets, fonts, etc only the character size within the page.  Everything else defaults to what browser settings they use.  So if they have their screen text size set to large - that's the way it prints.

Thanks!

I feel for you.  In my experience (20 years in the industry)  Customers don't always know what they are talking about.  Often they say things because they think that is what you want to hear.  Some times, they just want someone to blame, and you end up to be the unlucky guy.

You have to always say things diplomatically, never put the blame on anybody, try to get as much corporation from the client as possible, and tell the client that without replicating the problem, it is almost impossible to know what the problem is, since none of your other customers have the problem.  

At the end of the day, "you can please some people sometimes, but you can never please all the people all the time"

Thanks for the support.  I know the customer is always right - but at the same time, in this case, I know the customer is wrong.  I'm trying to figure out how to convince her of this without making her more angry.  I've never actually said it's her fault.  I've asked her to check her printer and if it does this when it prints anything else.  I've asked basic questions and in asking those questions, she's just concluding that I'm stating that it's her fault.  She's fixated on it being my problem.  

She has the Lexmark 3-in-1 and she scanned her page and sent it to me in an .rtf format which I viewed in Word 2003, Word 2007 and WordPerfect and all three show really goofy characters.  She of course, said it's my "conversion" software that caused those errors when I sent her screen dumps of what I was looking at.  So with that being said, could it go back to her printer/copier/scanner that is causing problems?

what do you mean "scanned her page and send it to you in RTF format"?  

You should get a scanned image in JPEG or GIF format.  If she scanned the pages and convert it to RTF, it probably doing OCR on the image and that may be the reason you see goofy characters.

OK - that makes sense.  She just said the .rtf she sent to me was scanned on her Lexmark.  She couldn't fax me the copy because my fax is unavailable right now so she scanned the printout and sent it to me.  I'm sure she didn't think about just sending me the .jpg image file.  

So with what she sent, I didn't think about OCR trying to convert the text, although the majority of the page is nothing but text and it should have converted just fine.  Line breaks were off, periods replaced commas - those make sense but seeing large sets of nonsense characters make me wonder when the text that was there was basic "invoice" information.  But then again, she handwrote on the page before she scanned it and the OCR might have been trying to convert that as well.

Darn - thought I was on to something there, but thanks for that insight!!!

Ok, let's step back a bit,  what was her original complain?  Did she not describing the problem but making her own diagnosis?

I wonder if she really have formatting problem with the printer?  For example, her printer margin is set larger than most people, so your asp is often printed off paper?

Actually I can tell with what she sent that there are a few lines just missing from the printout.  It's really weird.  Unfortunately they are not very long lines so it wouldn't move off the page.  And it's always the same set of lines that don't print.  The only thing that is different on the lines that don't print is that I used a <table> to get nice columns, but even then the headers print in the first row of the table, just not the data in the remaining rows.  The rest of the printing on the page is done via basic Response.write lines and like I said, it all displays properly, just when it prints, SOMETIMES the tables rows do not print.  Sometimes they do.  

She had no problems at all on Saturday.  It's a random occurrence.  Plus now she's saying that it does that randomly on both printers she has.  One time it was just the Lexmark, now it's both.  I can't say that she's lying because I honestly don't know.