Outlook is a great tool for exchanging emails with friends and co-workers. Lots of times we send emails that are important enough that they need to be printed out and taken to business meetings and we usually taking the process of printing a document or email for granted.

But when we can’t print out an otherwise unimportant email then all of a sudden that print job takes on much higher priority in our lives.

Other times we are able to print out a much needed document for an important meeting and rush to grab it, run down the hall, plop ourselves down at the conference table and then start passing out copies only to discover that our print job appears discolored, grayed out or lighter in appearance than normal. We curse and say that we will never use that printer again. But later we find out that the problem was never with the printer but with problem with Outlook, particularly with Outlook 2007.

In Outlook 2007, there was a bug discovered related to color categories and printing which resulted in darker colors being printed lighter than normal.

Outlook allows the user to be able to assign Color Categories which adds another dimension to organizing your data or, in the case of email, organizing your email contents. Color Categories give your end users the ability to categorize their emails, contacts or appointments. Folders can then be created based on those categories and then filled with email messages which fit those categories. (Unfortunately IMAP accounts are not supported.)

Now let’s get back to the dark colors being printed much lighter than otherwise expected problem.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Outlook Printing Problems