Black Fields Printed by Network Printer

[TyGuy]

I have a solution I am developing for my service program team. It involves numerous related fields showing up on a single layout. I am working on a G4 which is connected to Lexmark s2455 via an NT server.

The problem is that some of the fields which should have data in them end up printing solid black. I have checked the fields in the Preview mode and they appear fine. I tried resetting the printers settings (various options are available). I tried trashing the Filemaker prefs. After readjusting the layout, I got one of the fields to actually print data (completely illogical fix?!?), but I can't get any of the other fields to print like they are supposed to. This doesn't affect all of the fields - one portal and several other fields similar to the black ones print perfectly fine.

I don't have any problem printing other rather complex filemaker files which utilize related fields (local and network), portals, containers, etc, so I can't imagine its a printer problem. I'm just out of things to try at this point. Anyone have a similar experience and know what I should try?

[LiveOak]

Can you connect directly to the Lexmark with AppleTalk? If so, this would eliminate the NT variable in the equation. Also, sometimes objects on a layout become corrupted. I'd create a new layout with the same field parameters and try printing it as a test.

-bd

[TyGuy]

Unfortunately, the printer is in another part of the building and serves our entire administrative staff (who are on Win-doze machines). I did try to print the same file on my Canon BubbleJet and it printed fine, so the NT variable may be the whole problem. The difficulty is that I want the rest of my programming team, who are also on Macs and also a part of this network to be able to access the same datafiles. I could set up my computer as a host in this situation to give them access to my BubbleJet, but that seems extremely awkward. I could talk to my network administrator but unfortunately they know little about Filemaker and even less about Macs (!@#%).