Default to B&W printing when Word starts up - no suggestions actually work!

Update: I _was_ going to try Libre Office, but they wanted money (!), so I tried WPS Office instead. (Free if you keep to the basics.) Result: it WORKS! I selected "Last Used Settings" and that DID seem to be "sticky", from session to session.

So clearly the root cause is in Microsoft code rather than Apple (I guess that's not a huge surprise)... all I have to do is accept using a "work-alike" like WPS Office instead of the "real" Office. For my level of use, that's probably a safe bet!

Thanks for the pointers. And so far, I can recommend WPS Office as an Office substitute.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s a non-starter. I’m using Word, and in any case, it doesn’t seem like a Word problem so much as a Mac problem. I think I’ve seen lots of similar complaints for just printing in general.

Now, if someone can prove that normal printing (like, say, a PDF) works fine some way or another, cool, even if that doesn’t help Word. Any improvement is better than nothing.

That’s what I assumed (it said it was free), but as soon as I installed it and opened it (on my MacBook Air) I got a message saying something about “3 months free, then pay $$”. I admit I didn’t search through the fine print, I just removed the app and moved on to the next choice, which was WPS Office.

So if it’s free, they sure made it more unfriendly than necessary.

As for Pages, I hadn’t thought about that, I just assumed it wasn’t fully compatible. I’m glad to be wrong!

But the real news is that the problem is clearly a Word thing, and I have at least one workable free alternative already. Thanks for the suggestions!

MacOS Sequoia: 15.6.1 (24G90).

Word: Version 16.103.3 (25113013)

Oh, I see. Not as a replacement but as a test case. OK, I’ll give that a shot and see what happens.