Always Printing Drawing Objects

Word allows you to add all sorts of different drawing objects to your documents. If you want to make sure that these objects print with your document, then you should follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 or a later version display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Display.
3. Scroll through the available options until you find the Printing Options section. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Display options of the Word Options dialog box.

4. Make sure the Print Drawings Created in Word check box is selected.
5. Click on OK.

Now, your drawing objects should print whenever you print your document. The setting (in step 4) is "sticky," which means that it should remain selected unless you specifically make a change to unselect it.

If the setting does not remain set, then there are two possible explanations. First, it could be that you have a macro or an add-in installed and it is changing the setting. The only way to check out this possibility is to disable or remove your macros or add-ins to see if the problem goes away.

The other option is that the area in the Registry where Word stores your configuration settings has somehow become unstable or corrupted. Fortunately, you can delete this data key, and Word will rebuild it automatically the next time you start the program. Follow these steps:

1. Exit Word.
2. Start your favorite Registry editor.
3. Locate the following data key. (This data key, as shown below, is for Word 2007. If you are using Word 2010, replace 12.0 with 14.0. If you are using Word 2013, replace 12.0 with 15.0. If you are using Word 2016 or a later version, replace 12.0 with 16.0).

     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data

4. Rename the entire key to something else, or simply delete it.
5. Close the Registry editor.
6. Restart Word.

It should go without saying, of course, that any time you make changes in the Registry you run the risk of really messing up your machine. Don't delete or change any other information than what is detailed above. You may also want to back up your Registry before making any changes. (You can find out how to do Registry backups in any decent Windows tutorial book.)

Another caveat is that by renaming or removing the data key (and thereby forcing Word to start over from scratch), you lose many of your other customizations. Thus, you may want to have in mind exactly what those customizations are so that you can redo them after restarting Word.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6047) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Always Printing Drawing Objects.