Printers are very important to our daily lives and we use them for the benefit of ourselves and others.
However, sometimes printers can produce different things than what we want. In fact, as many users have shared there may be a case where a printer prints weird symbols instead of words .
Printers are machines that output what is put into them, however, there may be other things between the computer and the printer that cause printers to print different things than what we would like.
Your printer may be printing symbols instead of documents, there are several ways to fix this.
Let’s discover them together.
The topics of the post [ hide ]
- 1Printer That Prints Symbols Instead Of Words (Here Are All The Solutions)
- 1Incompatible application
- 2Corrupt character
- 3Bad connection to computer
- 4Troubleshoot the printer
- 5Reinstall the printer driver
- 2Why is my PDF printed in symbols?
Printer That Prints Symbols Instead Of Words (Here Are All The Solutions)
If your printer prints symbols or gibberish instead of text, follow these tips to troubleshoot the problem correctly.
- Wrong application
- Corrupt character
- Bad computer connection
- Troubleshoot printer problems
- Reinstall the printer driver
Incompatible application
Incompatible software could cause the printer to print symbols instead of the correct contents displayed on the screen in the document.
If the printer outputs symbols instead of document content, verify that the document is open in a compatible document.
You can open the document in another application and try to print it again.
If the correct contents are printed, the problem was caused by the other application.
Corrupt character
Corrupted font files can cause the printer to output symbols instead of the correct content on the document.
Sometimes there may be a case where two different font files may have the same name and the operating system may have trouble deciding which one to use. This can cause symbols or things to print other than what is in the document.
The main cause to this error, mostly happens when it was not downloaded properly. This can cause problems when trying to print.
Having these printing problems can interrupt your work and consume valuable time. Corrupt font files can also slow down your computer or cause applications to crash.
Bad computer connection
Printers can print symbols even when the printer-computer connection is faulty.
The connection can be USB or wireless. If the connection is bad, this could interfere with the date being sent to the printer.
Check if there might be other devices that could be interfering with the signal. You may also need to connect the printer directly to your computer and see if that helps.
If the printer is connected via USB or other cables over a network, check the cables for damage or looseness.
Check if the ends of the USB cable are rusty. Rust can develop on cables depending on the area you are in and how they are stored.
Troubleshoot printer problems
The printer may print symbols if the printer driver is corrupted or damaged. The printer driver goes between the computer and the printer and if the driver is corrupted or damaged then this can affect the printer output on paper.
You can choose to run the printer troubleshooter as follows:
- Click Searchand type Troubleshoot Settings, click Troubleshoot Settings.
- The Troubleshooting page will open, click More troubleshooters to view the other troubleshooters available.
- When the More troubleshooting window appears, click the Runbutton next to Printer .
- Windows will run the printer troubleshooter.
When the troubleshooting is complete, Windows will display a result. You may be prompted to take action and confirm the solutions presented.
Reinstall the printer driver
If the troubleshooting doesn’t solve the problem, the next step I recommend you take is to uninstall and reinstall the printer driver.
Why is my PDF printing in symbols?
A PDF file may be printed as symbols if a non-standard character encoding was used when creating the document.
The affected characters may not map correctly to Unicode. To fix this, the document needs to be redone or change the font from the source file if another file format was converted to PDF.
