Open Dental Forum

I am having printing issues. It is suggested that my issues are only occurring in my office and no one elses.
The same issue occurs when attempting to print from any of my 10 workstations.

My problem:
I have been using an HP 4050tn Black and White printer to print my OD statements and paper insurance forms. All was well. Then one evening I updated OD to a newer version ( I do not recall which one)....about 6 months ago. After that time, whenever we printed a patient statement or insurance form on the HP 4050 printer, there were no longer any shades of grey. The print was black only. There were no shaded grey cells, no dashed lines("tear here"), none of the lighter stock print on insurance forms. We switched to printing these forms on a color printer. At this point the print was fine. Perhaps this is over kill, but I have three color printers (HP4550 LaserJet, HP Photosmart 7350 and Hp Photosmart 7260). Recently, I did an experiment. I tried printing statements and insurance forms in both color and greyscale. To my surprise, all the color printers set to print in greyscale only print the documents in black ink, no shades of grey.

So here is my favor that I'm asking from you.

If you use a color printer to print your statements and insurance forms, try printing in greyscale and see if there is a difference.

If you use a black and white printer, you may not be aware that there are shades of grey in each of these forms. Please check your statements and insurance forms to see if in fact you are printing shades of grey.

Please post your findings.

Thank you.

Cheers!!!!!!
Savvy

We haven't changed claim form printing for years. The statement recently switched to a different print engine, but that doesn't explain the claim form. It's just an image. I don't know what we could possibly do differently. We just send the image to the printer. Maybe you just noticed our switch to the new statement print engine.

Do you like apples?

It turns out that the problem isn't just limited to statements and insurance forms........

The gremlin also appears when printing T/Ps in greyscale.
The teeth do not show up.
The referred out items do not show up.
Treatment planned items do not show up.
Existing Other Provider, Existing Current Provider and Complete are the only graphics that appear. They also happen to be the darkest of the colors used.
The black print appears, but no cells.
Occurs on ALL printers set to greyscale and black/white, from all workstations.
An Ansel Adams photo from Google Images prints fine......on ALL printers.
My color photos are fine printed in greyscale from any printer.

How do you like them apples?


Cheers!!!
Savvy

Well, you have been thorough in your exploration of this. Because of your description as an easily reproducible issue, I put it on the bug list under version as 5.8. It won't take long to verify.

bump

bump

You should turn your lights up so you don't keep running into things.

OK, we've tested it and can't duplicate it. The key point here is that your problem printers are network printers that are not hooked up directly to a computer. So it all becomes an issue of printer drivers, operating systems, hardware, etc. There's nothing we can do about it as far as I know. Maybe you changed something else recently. Maybe it has something to do with the version of Windows that you're using.

If anyone else is having this problem, feel free to post here.

Go to Windows Control Panel, then Printers. Right click on the printer and check the default printer preferences. This could be the cause.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

Remember, all other printing is fine. Only printing originating through OD is affected.
And, not only is print quality the issue. The Insurance Form image gets distorted such that the inputted data fields are all out of wack.

Thanks for your reply.

Cheers!

I make my living as a diagnostician....and I'm pretty good at it...............
Let's see how good........

I removed my server (dell 530, win xppro sp3) from my network.
I hooked up my old server (dell dimension 4550, winxppro sp2).
The old server has OD 5.2.14, MS Office 2003, and all the printers except the Photosmart 7260.
I opened up OD 5.2.
I printed an insurance claim to my hp laserjet 4050.
IT WORKED FINE!
I printed a statement on the 4050.
IT WORKED FINE!
I printed a T/P to the 4050.
IT WORKED FINE!
I repeated the printing to my HP Color LaserJet 4550 and Photosmart 7350.
THEY ALL PRINTED FINE!!!!!!!
I backed up the Dell 4550 Open Dental version 5.2.14 program.
I disconnected the Dell 4550 and rehooked up the Dell 530.
I backed up from Dell 530, OD ver 5.8.3.
I removed OD from the Dell 530.
Using the OD ver 5.2.14 backup, I reinstalled OD.
I opened up OD and printed an insurance form to my HP4050.
IT WORKED FINE!!!!
I printed everything I could think of in OD.
THEY WORKED FINE!!!!!
I used the back up of version 5.8.3 and restored my data.
It went through the updating process.
I opened up OD.
I printed an insurance form to the HP 4050.

What do you think happened?

Thhhhhhhaaat's right.
IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EVERYTHING WORKS FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I updated to 5.9.2(beta)
All is still well.

You can believe what you like, but this complete computer bafoon will be hard to convince that sometime between updating version 5.2.14 and 5.7 something in OD got tweaked. Perhaps it only got tweaked for one upgrade and then got untweaked. Whatever it was, it occurred in the body of the main OD program. Perhaps, if one did not upgrade to the tweaked version, but skipped for a later version, the bug wasn't picked up. I upgrade VERY REGULARLY, (I check at the end of almost every work day).

CHEERS!!!!!!!
Savvy

That left me totally scratching my head, but at least it's working.