This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Cannot print "selection"

more options

Highlight portion of webpage. Choose Print and Selection. I always get garbage, never the correct selection.

IE works perfectly with Selection.

Printer Lexmark Pro905

Highlight portion of webpage. Choose Print and Selection. I always get garbage, never the correct selection. IE works perfectly with Selection. Printer Lexmark Pro905

All Replies (6)

more options

Does this happen on any/every page or only on certain sites?

Does the same text print normally if you print the page rather than the selection?


Could you check the following and try using only TrueType fonts:

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Options > Content

In the Fonts & Colors section, click the Advanced button. For the default fonts, try:

Serif = Times New Roman
Sans-serif = Arial
Monospace = Courier New

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

more options

Maybe use an extension to remove unwanted content.

more options

Another great add-on for isolating content on a page is Nuke Anything Enhanced. This post has more information: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/927457#answer-333518

more options

Happens on every page, including pages from Wiki and ebay. Usually I get a few lines of random printing, the page nearly blank. The process is repeatable.

If I don't want to switch to IE I copy the Selection into Word and print from there.

If I print the whole page it is normal.

The fonts you recommended were already in place.

Thanks.

more options

I will give Nuke Anything a try. Thanks for the link.

Surprised that Firefox does not fix such a basic function which works perfectly in IE.

more options

Surprised that Firefox does not fix such a basic function which works perfectly in IE.

Changes were made in both Firefox 12 and Firefox 13 that affected the selection printing feature, so it's possible there is a new glitch with that feature that wasn't picked up in beta testing. As far as I know, no one else has reported a gibberish problem yet, so it may take some time to track down the cause.

While you are in a troubleshooting mode, could you try Firefox's Safe Mode? This is a common technique for testing with add-ons disabled.

First, I recommend backing up your Firefox settings in case something goes wrong. See Backing up your information. (You can copy your entire Firefox profile folder somewhere outside of the Mozilla folder.)

Next, restart Firefox in Safe Mode using

Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

In the Safe Mode dialog, do not check any boxes, just click "Continue in Safe Mode."

Do selections print normally in Safe Mode?


Edit: I may have misinterpreted your original post. When you said garbage, I assumed gibberish text, but on second reading, it sounds as though it was text other than the text you selected. Is that a better description?

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer