Windows Explored

This issue recently came up after a user could no longer print web pages from a site that previously printed fine. The Print Preview and Print options in Internet Explorer rendered a blank page, except for the header and footer information:

When you encounter this, it is often by design. In IE 8 and IE 9 there is a simple way to check if a web page is has been set to restrict printing.

1. Navigate to the web page.
2. Open the built in Developer Tools from the IE menu or press F12.
3. Select the CSS tab and then the url that contains the print.css.
   
4. If display: none is present, the page cannot be printed via the browser:
   

Additionally, text in the web page was no longer selectable. This can also be controlled by the use of scripts and you can see this by going to the Script tab.

1. Select the Script tab and choose the url that you cannot select text from, e.g. report.asp below:
   

If you are still using IE 7, the developer tools are not included by default and you will need to download the IE Developer Tools Add-in.