White Text Appears Black When Printed from WordPad

• Microsoft Windows 95

SYMPTOMS

When you print a document that contains white text from WordPad, the white text may printed as black rather than white.

CAUSE

WordPad maps the color white to black when you print to a black and white or color printer.

RESOLUTION

Change the color of the text to a color other than white, or use a program other than WordPad to print the document. To change the text color in a document in WordPad, follow these steps:

1. Select the section of text that you want to change.

2. On the Format menu, click Font.

3. Click a color in the Color box, and then click OK.

   ARTICLE-ID: Q148386
   TITLE     : Problems Formatting Text in WordPad

MORE INFORMATION

The universal printer driver (Unidrv.dll) maps all non-white colors to black when you print to a black and white or color printer, but it does not map the color white to black. This behavior causes all non-white text to appear as black text when printed. Because the color white is not mapped to black, white text is printed normally.

However, WordPad maps the color white to black when you print to a black and white or color printer. Therefore, white text is converted to black text before it is sent to Unidrv.dll, which causes the text to appear as black text when printed. This behavior is not consistent with Microsoft Word for Windows or Microsoft Excel for Windows.

For additional information about printing colored text or graphics to a black and white printer, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q130508
   TITLE     : Non-White Text or Graphics Printed in Black