Word 2013 forgets printer settings

It is bizarre that Microsoft deny this is a problem despite user experience such as yours to the contrary.

I am not sure if it will be good enough for you but a workaround is available in a shareware macro here:

http://www.gmayor.com/Associate_Printer.htm

You put the template in your Word startup folder and it adds a macro that allows you to associate docs with printers. That appears as a ribbon bar button.

It works fine for me. I have been using it for some months. You lose the printing options of the usual dialog box, but I find it useful for printing labels to my little label printer, as it prevents me printing them on my A4 printer or, worse, printing loads of useless labels when I just wanted a letter! It might help...

This is a very long discussion, so I can't tell if someone from Microsoft has replied to this thread. Anyway, Microsoft staff don't usually participate here, because it is a user-to-user forums.

Unlike other applications, Word offers very little control over the printer. The printer set as the default in Windows will be used unless you picked a different printer for the current Word session. Exiting and restarting Word will revert to the default printer again.

I didn't expect MS to respond here. I was hoping some other person was ahead of me on the curve and found a workaround or outright fix. I'd prefer not to use a macro because I don't know enough to use them and a little info is far worse than a lot of info on a subject.  

I do have an update of sorts. My color laser which is printing only a document seems to be behaving at the moment so that's 1 of the 3 problems solved temporarily. I also can't say for sure if it's anything I did to fix it either.

My other two issues involve printing from a website using Chrome or Mozilla. I'm about to try IE but I suspect there will be no real fix just for using it. At this time, I can change my way of doing things and get results, while not idea, at least workable. My issue was printing on a label printer and then printing to BW Laser printer, both from a website (ebay and amazon using Java). IF I print all the labels first, then go back and reopen each transaction I can then switch the printer from the Zebra to the Laser and change the settings for that printer so it prints to "fit the page" also know as 100% on the scaling feature depending on how you arrive at that area of the properties.

My Zebra label printer has lately been overriding its settings and changing the size of the page from 4x6 to 4.88 x 11 and printing one label then a blank label (representing the 11" I assume). I have to change that frequently. When I go to the printer properties from the windows start menu, it shows the correct label size of 4x6. I don't know what is changing it but it NEVER, repeat NEVER did it until I installed office 2013.

Does anyone know what might happen if I uninstalled 2013?  Office 2010 is still on my machine and yes I have tried printing everything from there too and it seems whatever changed on the install changed it for that too. If I remove both and then re-install 2010, will anything negative happen to my documents stored on my PC and in Dropbox?  I can't afford to loose any of them obviously.   Anyone tried that one?

My remark that Microsoft staff don't participate in the forum was actually for JeremyDJShaw, to whom I replied.

You can uninstall a newer version of Office and leave an older version behind. Files stored on the hard drive won't be affected by that.

Note that it is best to repair Office 2010 after you have uninstalled Office 2013. See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Repair-an-Office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b?CorrelationId=94d7eb60-b980-4dd9-9a56-1331f492ce25&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US.

I had Office 2013 installed a few days ago.

I have ALWAYS been able to "set" my printing preferences in Office 2010 (and previous versions), and have them stay permanent for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, even after logging off (i.e., I set my printing preferences in Word 2010, about 2-3 years ago and never had to reapply).  I did not do this through a macro. I work with about 400 other persons and we all had the ability to go in and change our default preferences by manually selecting what we wanted and then make them our permanent "default".

I am not able to change my default preferences in 2013. I hope that as I keep researching this I will find that there is a way to select my default preferences.