Troubleshooting Microsoft Office v.X 10.1.5: Cannot print black and white spreadsheets

Microsoft has apparently confirmed to one reader that an arguably important feature in Excel was removed in the Service Release 1 update to the Mac BU's Office v.X.

Reader Greg Newton writes "Most users will format their worksheets using various colors and fills and in all earlier versions there was a feature in Page Setup to allow the worksheet to be printed in Black and White. This feature is a check box is located under the 'Sheet' tab in 'Page Setup'. We found that all of our users when moving from Office 2001/OS9 to Office X/OS X were unable to print any worksheet in black and white format. All worksheets now print in grayscale/color which is not acceptable for faxing to clients (well if we all used color fax machines it wouldn?t matter but that isn't going happen any time soon). Our company relies heavily on Excel worksheets that must be faxed for proposals each and every day so this has crippled our output.

"The latest version of Office X 10.1.5 still has the Black and White checkbox in Page Setup window but Microsoft revealed that they 'removed' the code behind this feature... Some upgrade! The only solution is to call Microsoft and get them to send you the Office X 10.0.0 CD, remove the version with Service Release 1 and reinstall the old version that still works. This makes Excel workable, but anyone using Entourage with Exchange Server or with a Hotmail account is in trouble."

Feedback, or a solution for printing black and white spreadsheets in Excel v.X with the first service release applied? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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