Expert: Amy - 10/3/2006

Question
We have Adobe CS2 Illustrator installed on a PC, and trying to print some image files. It was working fine yesterday, and started giving error message when I try to print today. "Can't print the illustration". I tested the printer, it is working fine.
What is the cause of this? How can I solve it?
Thanks

Answer
Hi Jeff

Could be a font or a linked or embedded image, memory, buggy printer driver, complex image, corrupt data, any number of things. Check out this topic at Adobe.com for all the possiblities.

http://groups.google.com/group/adobe.illustrator.windows/browse_frm/thread/c2679...

Your printer might be working fine but there are printers that have drivers with bugs that result in errors like this when they encounter postscript they can't handle.

You didn't say whether a simple (new) document will print.

Try these things for now.

Quit AI, then delete AIprefs file, then restart Illustrator.

Do NOT open a problem document. First try creating a new simple document and printing that.

If that works:

Copy everything and paste problem artwork into that new document then try to print.

Or in the problem document, go back into page setup.
If you have another printer, select that one and select Okay, then go back again and select the problem printer and say okay. This is to tell Illustrator the printer's settings again.

Additionally:

If there are fonts in the document, turn them all into outlines and try printing.

Embed those image files instead of linking them.

Flatten all transparency.

You will find more ideas like this at that link I gave you above. This problem happens more than you'd care to guess unfortunately and there are many causes.

I hope one of the solutions listed here or there works for you!

Amy Pace