Lately at work, we are having some problem printing an Microsoft Excel document to Brother HL-2030/2040 printer in Windows XP SP3. However, the printer works perfectly in other application, such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, or even a test page from the settings. But printing from Microsoft Excel just does not seem to be working. When pressing the print button, you will notice that everything went well, but strangely nothing is coming out from the printer.
And something more extraordinary, when selecting another printer in Microsoft Excel, such as a network printer, it works perfectly. This problem seems only to be occurring with Brother HL-2030/2040 in Microsoft Excel.
After I played with every setting I can think of and installing and updating Microsoft Office countless time, I found something very interesting. When making a slight change on the Brother HL-2030/2040 printer settings, e.g. another default printer instead of Brother printer, or changing the drivers, surprisingly it works again in Microsoft Excel…for a while!
Until now, I am not able to find what is causing this problem. But to make sure that users can perform their work, I created a batch file that changes the default printer and reset it back to it again. This does allows user to print document again from Excel, but it must be run every time when the printer does not work. This might not be the cleanest solution, but it works temporally. If another knows a solution, just let me know. Reinstalling windows is currently out of question 
