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

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?

  • 3 replies
  • 6 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

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?

All Replies (3)

more options

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.

more options

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?

more options

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