Access 2016 Print Ribbon Menu Strangeness

Question

I have an Access application I am maintaining for my users.  The reports are opening in print preview mode, modally.  The Print ribbon is showing, but the Close and Zoom buttons are disabled.

If I click Print or Save as PDF, even if I cancel the dialog, then the buttons show properly enabled.

Strangely, even obtaining this screen shot with 3rd party screen capture utility causes the buttons to enable themselves.  Further testing shows even Alt-tabbing to another application and back then enables those buttons.  So this isn't an Access development issue per se, but maybe an Access 2016 / Windows issue.

I know there can be various issues with Access 2016, (such as mouse-wheel scrolling not working) that have been fixed by applying latest Office 2016 updates (which I just did yesterday)

This does NOT happen on my other Windows 7 / Access 2010 development PC.

Any idea what may be causing this one?

---

Ron Mittelman

Answer 1

Hello RMittelman,

Have you ever custom ribbon in the database? I tried to display a report in print preview model and the ribbon in my database is different from yours.

If you create a new database file and then create a report for testing, will you still get this issue?

Best Regards,

Terry

---

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [e-mail].

Answer 2

Thanks for the reply Terry.

I don't think the issue is that I have a custom ribbon for the print previews instead of the default one you show, but instead that those buttons are disabled then enabled again if I simply alt-tab to another application and back again.  This seems like a very strange issue, but I don't think it is the particular ribbon configuration.  I think there is an Access 2016 issue here, because the same thing doesn't happen on the other PCs which are running Access 2010.

---

Ron Mittelman

Answer 3

Hello RMittelman,

Since you may use a custom ribbon and we could not try to reproduce your issue so its hard to say if it is related to Access 2016 or the ribbon customization or anything else.

If you do really use a custom ribbon, I would suggest you share the ribbon xml so we could try to reproduce the issue. If not, please detail how we could reproduce the issue.

Thanks for understanding.

Best Regards,

Terry

---

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [e-mail].

Answer 4

My first instinct is: bad display or printer driver.

Make sure you have the latest of both. Switch default printer. Still an issue?

---

-Tom. Microsoft Access MVP

Answer 5

Thanks Terry.

I inherited the support of this application, written by another developer who is no longer available.  I do not know if this is a custom ribbon or not, only agree that it probably is because it does not look like the screen shot you supplied of the complete print preview ribbon.

The application is so complex that there is no way to duplicate the issue other than sending you the entire application, which I am not at liberty to do.

Since the same exact application / print preview ribbon works fine on other PCs using Access 2010, I'm still thinking it has nothing to do with the ribbon itself.

One thing I forgot to mention, the typical production PC does not have Access installed at all.  They all have the Access 2010 run-time, and the application is distributed as an ACCDE file.  My development PC does NOT have the Access run-time installed, and only has full Access 2016.  This issue occurs on my development PC whether I am running the actual ACCDB database or the published ACCDE database.  And again, Alt-tabbing to another application and back, or clicking the print button then cancelling out, causes those buttons to be enabled.  That's why I think it is a display or Access issue rather than an issue with the ribbon itself.

I recently had a totally different issue where the mouse wheel wouldn't scroll a continuous form (only on the Access 2016 version), and sometimes scrolling by clicking scroll bar would only scroll the right half of the form.  Turns out that many people had similar issues and they were resolved after the last Office update.  I only bring this up to point out that sometimes strange things happen that are related to Access itself, right?

In any case, I'm about ready to give up on this issue, since none of our users are using Access 2016 or having this issue.  If we later upgrade them and the issue surfaces again, I can continue this then.  Thanks anyway for your help.

---

Ron Mittelman

Answer 6

Thanks for the suggestion Tom.  I will look into this.  As mentioned in prior reply, I will probably have to drop this issue if this doesn't make a difference.

Thanks again...

---

Ron Mittelman

Answer 7

Hello RMittelman,

What's the result of Tom's suggestion? Does it work for you?

Best Regards,

Terry

---

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [e-mail].