THE PROBLEM:

Sometimes when you are printing images or large files to one of the black and white laser printers in the labs, you may get a sheet of paper that only has the following text printed on it:

Error: Syntaxerror
OFFENDING COMMAND: --nostringval--


WHAT’S HAPPENING:

The short answer is that the file size is too big for that printer to handle, so it shoots out this error code. Effectively there’s too much information for the printer to process (usually happens on older printers with lower amounts of on-board RAM to process files), so it reports this error.

THE SOLUTION:

The simplest solution is to resize the resolution/filesize of your image/file. See notes below:

IMAGES:

• Resolutions of 150-200dpi at 100% size (ex: 150dpi at 8x10” will process and print pretty easily.)

If you resize your image to optimize it for the printer, then you are less likely to get the error listed above.

If you send a color 600 dpi file that’s 18”x 24” to print on a black and white printer on a letter-sized sheet, the printer will effectively throw out all the information it doesn’t need in order to print the file. If you are able to do a little of that work in advance, then your print will come out more successfully.

PDFs:

• Unless optimized, PDFs potentially contain a lot more information/resolution in the placed images, and can contain pages upon pages of larger sized image files, clogging up the print queue.

To work around this:


Reduce File Size of your PDF

1) With your file open in Acrobat, go to File > Reduce File Size and follow the prompts (make sure to rename your file so you don’t overwrite your original file)

2) This will create a new file that’s been resampled to screen res (typically 72dpi) and should print much smoother.


Print File as Grayscale (black and white)

1) When you go to print your file, you can also select the Print in grayscale (black and white) checkbox at the top of the print dialog box to send black and white data to the printer.