Printing Calendars with Color Categories

Some Outlook 2007 users are having problems printing calendars with the events colored with color categories. In most cases, the problem printer is an HP and its correctly configured to print in color.

HP support documents have this to say about the problem:

Some or all of my jobs print in monochrome (black) only. How do I change this?

If a software program, such as Microsoft Outlook, is restricted from printing in color, embedded documents in e-mail files will be printed in black (monochrome), even if the application would otherwise print in color.

If this were true, printing to electronic formats such as PDF (which has the correctly colored appointments) then printing the PDF would work as expected, with colored events.  Printing the same PDF to a different printer results in colored appointments and printing other PDF’s containing color works on the HP. Printing email that contains colors works, so it’s not a restriction in Outlook.

You can try changing Outlook’s option to print with gray shading, but note that it may not have an effect.

1. Go to File, Print
2. In the Print dialogue, choose Page setup...
3. Uncheck Print using gray shading (near bottom of dialog)

If printing color categories is really important to you, check out the tools at Calendar Printing Tools for Outlook. If these don't meet your needs you'll need to use a different printer. I believe only HP printers are affected and a future driver update may fix it.

Colors in Calendar Printing Assistant

The Calendar Printing Assistant (CPA) uses the color of the calendar as seen in the left bar, not color categories. For example, if you add 3 calendars or task folders, the items will be colored to match the calendar color. Even so, my HP can't print any colors from the CPA - not the dates or the bullets that mark the calendar. There is a border around the all day events.

Will this ever be changed so that calendars are identified by the colored dots and events use their category colors? I have no idea. It depends on how many people use the CPA and request the feature.

More Information

Updated Aug 14 2008

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