Problem (Office 2010, Windows 7 Pro 64bit): When trying to print a Word document that contains Excel sheets in it the Excel sheets print out as black squares.

Important: This fixed an issue where old word documents (2000-2003) didn’t print correctly after upgrading to office 2010, if this isn’t your case look for other solutions.

The Story (TL;DR version below): Couple weeks ago I had a very interesting problem, a client called and said that when they print a Word document they get black squares where the Excel sheets are suppose to be.
These documents are monthly reports they print out every single month and this is the first time it happened, the only thing that changed since last time is that they recently upgraded to Office 2010 from Office 2007.
To add to the confusion, some printers would print out just fine while couple specific HP laser printers wouldn’t, after spending a decent amount of time replacing and trying different drivers from HP (UPD was/is and forever will be horrible – well.. maybe not if HP ever fixes it – stop being lazy!), reading countless internet posts and trying to tweak Word’s settings I decided to take on a new approach.
I was working under the assumption that since this only happens with 2 printers (out of 5 different ones) this had to be a printer / driver issue – WRONG!
I moved to check the documents themselves remembering the original documents were created using Office 2000 and never upgraded or converted (for all I knew). I picked a test subject and converted it to Docx format, allowing Word to convert it, save it, reopen and try to print – nada.
What I didn’t know (and wasn’t written anywhere) was that when you convert a document to Office 2007+ format you only convert the contents of the document, any embedded items aren’t included – which means, yes, the Excel sheets were still in 2000 format.
Ok, next step, I converted the actual sheets to Office 2007+, saved, reopened, printed and VIOLA! – Success!

Step by step How to:

1. Open your document and save it as Office 2007-2010 format (DocX).
2. Right click any Excel sheets and choose Convert.
3. Pick Microsoft Office Excel.
4. Hit OK.
5. Save your document – you will be prompted few times that converting will remove or change some items, this is case by case and for your consideration. Keep in mind that at some point you will have to upgrade these anyway.
6. Close and reopen your document.
7. Print.
8. Come back here and let me know if this worked for you 🙂

TL;DR: Convert your old documents to office 2007-2010 format (ie Docx), convert all the work sheets within the document into Microsoft Office Excel sheets, save, reopen and print.