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When I try to print from Thunderbird output is unreadable however if I use Google Cloud print it prints fine. What can I do to fix it?

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  • Last reply by Matt

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When I try to print from Thunderbird output is unreadable however if I use Google Cloud print it prints fine. Print preview looks fine but when I send it to the printer the printed text is just a bunch of boxes and other unreadable characters. Appears to only be an issue when I use Thunderbird (printing from within hotmail or gmail is fine). Using a Brother laser printer with latest driver. What can I do to fix it? Might there be a different font that the Thunderbird to printer might deal with better?

When I try to print from Thunderbird output is unreadable however if I use Google Cloud print it prints fine. Print preview looks fine but when I send it to the printer the printed text is just a bunch of boxes and other unreadable characters. Appears to only be an issue when I use Thunderbird (printing from within hotmail or gmail is fine). Using a Brother laser printer with latest driver. What can I do to fix it? Might there be a different font that the Thunderbird to printer might deal with better?

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I really do not know it this will help, but try it. Nothing lost if it does not

Open the config editor. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/config-editor and search for printer.print. Reset the value to default (or delete it) and restart Thunderbird.

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No change. I reset value of the stand alone printer.print line and printed a few emails and got the same kind of error.

Did note that when I printed plain text emails the only part that is unreadable is the message header (body of the email is fine). If I print a message with anything beyond plain text it is all unreadable (some of the included pictures/graphics do print ok though).

There were a number of other printer.print lines with the Brother printer identification followed by header, footer etc. that appeared to be like a page setup type of thing. Would it be worth removing these printer/lines altogether and starting over with it?

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try reinstalling the printer driver that came with the printer, it worked for someone else last week.