Can any 'Techie' computor experts explain how this problem occured?

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SpokeyDokey

67, & my GP says I will officially be old at 70!
Moderator
Just purchased a new Laptop and downloaded MS Office 365 Personal.

Here's the problem:

Upon opening an Excel workbook the first use of the Bold function to format a cell caused the program to hang for 10-15 seconds. Subsequent use was ok until the next time the workbook was used when the problem repeated itself.

Happened on all of my Excel workbooks.

After much trial and error and extensive Googling etc the solution was found - our 6 year old Epson printer had been designated the default printer. Removing its default printer status cured the problem.

I can't find an explanation as to how this caused the problem in the first place.

Any ideas - just to satisfy my curiosity?
 
Just purchased a new Laptop and downloaded MS Office 365 Personal.

Here's the problem:

Upon opening an Excel workbook the first use of the Bold function to format a cell caused the program to hang for 10-15 seconds. Subsequent use was ok until the next time the workbook was used when the problem repeated itself.

Happened on all of my Excel workbooks.

After much trial and error and extensive Googling etc the solution was found - our 6 year old Epson printer had been designated the default printer. Removing its default printer status cured the problem.

I can't find an explanation as to how this caused the problem in the first place.

Any ideas - just to satisfy my curiosity?
Without knowing the internals of Excel's typeface rendering code or the printer driver, not really.

With computers and printers there are generally two kinds of fonts; those the computer display uses, and those stored in the printer (so-called device fonts)
Most printers will use either kind but they will generally get higher quality output when using device fonts.

When you set a cell or piece of text to bold, it selects a different font from the same typeface... e.g. Arial Bold isn't just Arial but with magic applied to make it thicker, it's a separate font with different instructions for how to draw the text.

My wild stab in the dark guess is that when you change the text formatting Excel asks the default printer "hey man, do you know Arial Bold?"... and while waiting for a reply from the printer, the program hangs. On subsequent requests, either
a) Excel already knows the answer
b) The printer replies immediately or
c) Excel knows not to ask the printer

Whichever of these is the reason, it is not remembered the next time you open Excel.

Why Excel tries to communicate with the printer, who knows? I bet even the people who make Excel don't know. The code is probably the best part of 30 years old.
 
OP
OP
SpokeyDokey

SpokeyDokey

67, & my GP says I will officially be old at 70!
Moderator
Without knowing the internals of Excel's typeface rendering code or the printer driver, not really.

With computers and printers there are generally two kinds of fonts; those the computer display uses, and those stored in the printer (so-called device fonts)
Most printers will use either kind but they will generally get higher quality output when using device fonts.

When you set a cell or piece of text to bold, it selects a different font from the same typeface... e.g. Arial Bold isn't just Arial but with magic applied to make it thicker, it's a separate font with different instructions for how to draw the text.

My wild stab in the dark guess is that when you change the text formatting Excel asks the default printer "hey man, do you know Arial Bold?"... and while waiting for a reply from the printer, the program hangs. On subsequent requests, either
a) Excel already knows the answer
b) The printer replies immediately or
c) Excel knows not to ask the printer

Whichever of these is the reason, it is not remembered the next time you open Excel.

Why Excel tries to communicate with the printer, who knows? I bet even the people who make Excel don't know. The code is probably the best part of 30 years old.

Thanks for replying and that all sounds very plausible.

I can sleep easier now. ^_^
 
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