CUSTOMER SERVICE MEMO CSTP0301

for 2003 Edition of HowardSoft's Tax Preparer®

SUBJECT: Troubleshooting problems with Windows-graphic printouts

A variety of problems with printouts have been experienced by some customers, largely due to the way their printer is set up, so this document steps through the known problems and solutions for a variety of printers. In addition, some files delivered by HowardSoft have been found to be defective and are identified here.

Check for damaged fonts first. Some of the disks we delivered this year contained a damaged font file, which could lead to one of the following symptoms:

• After starting a graphic printout, the message "Error loading true type tax fonts" is encountered and no graphic printout is generated.
• No error message is encountered, but rectangles or weird characters appear where large type should appear, such as the "1040" and "2002" at the top of page 1 of Form 1040.

The solution is to install a new set of fonts from our web site. To do this,

• Step 1: Click Check Web for Updates in your program group for HowardSoft Tax Preparer.
• Step 2: Once our web page appears, click the Downloads button.
• Step 3: Once the Downloads page appears, click the link at the bottom of the page titled Repair HowardSoft's True Type Tax fonts. Once the file downloads and executes, the above problems should disappear.

For laser printers, check driver settings. Laser printers typically have numerous fonts built into the printer, and the default setting for many of their print drivers is to use those built-in fonts whenever possible. However, tax forms must be printed with such precision that using built-in fonts can cause misalignment at the least and garbled printing at the worst. It is therefore very important that your printer use the fonts we supply rather than the ones built into the printer. To ensure this you may have to change the settings for the print driver, as follows:

• Step 1: Access the print driver properties by clicking Start, then Settings, then Printers, then right-click on the icon for your printer, then click Properties.

• Step 2: Change the True Type settings that you find on such tabs as Print Quality, Fonts, etc., using the following guidelines. You may have to experiment with different settings because there is no industry standard for the meaning of various labels, but the following settings generally produce good printouts because they allow the use of True Type fonts rather than built-in fonts:

  • Print True Type as Bitmaps
  • Print True Type as Graphics
  • Always use True Type Fonts

  By contrast, the following settings generally produce unacceptable printouts

  • Allow Substitutions for True Type fonts
  • Sent True Type fonts according to Font Substitution Table.
  • Allow Subtitutions for Fastest Printing

Check for latest version of Tax Preparer. HowardSoft regularly makes minor changes in the program and the graphic files in order to improve performance or improve aesthetics, so it is important that you keep your software up-to-date in order to ensure the best-looking printouts. Most changes in graphic forms are minor, such as correction of spelling errors or mistyped line numbers, but two important changes exist for California Premium Level updates:

• Schedule CA: A bold rectangle now prints around the amount for line 42 instead of a faint rectangle.
• Form 540-ES: A large "2003" now prints in the upper left corner of 540-ES vouchers instead of "2002."