Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Forcing Printouts to Black and White.
Kevin has created a performance assessment document (about 12 pages long) that includes many tables separated by sections of text. Many of the tables have rows that have been shaded. He is wondering if there is a way, preferably without using a macro, that he can "force" the document to print the shaded rows in black and white, even when it is being printed on a color-capable printer.
There is no way to do this in Word, and it is not entirely clear if it is possible to do it using a macro. There is a way to configure color graphics so that they print as grayscale, but you want to print colored shading, which doesn't have the same configuration settings available as do graphics.
It is possible, with some printer drivers, to force a document to print in grayscale, but this capability will vary from printer to printer. (You access these individual printer capabilities in Word 2007 by displaying the Print dialog box and then clicking the Properties button for the printer you are using. In Word 2010 you display the File tab of the ribbon, click Print, and then click the Printer Properties link.) Since these capabilities are handled by the printer driver, there is no way to access them with a macro, and even if you could, there is no guarantee that they are available for all printers.
The best solution might be to changing the shading used in the tables in the first place. It won't look as colorful on-screen, but it will provide the desired black and white printout.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11697) applies to Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Forcing Printouts to Black and White.
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2022-10-19 06:35:12
Graham Booth
I found that relying on Word to create monochrome documents by avoiding use of colours doesn't necessarily work. It seems that Word renders "grey" shading using colour, and even inconsistently within a document - shading created using the same grey having different hues, even on the same page. I found this out when our office printer showed the cost of printing a "monochrome" document to be the same as a "colour" one. The solution is to "print" the document to PDF, selecting the Grayscale option at printout. Unfortunately, neither the Save As PDF facility in Word, or the Microsoft Print To PDF facility provide this option. Neither is it possible (as we have found from previous WordTips) to define the printout options such that they are fixed for a particular document. The answer lies with using a 3rd party app. to create the PDF.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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