Writer has started to fill the printed page background with color

SamSpade1 · March 4, 2019, 1:18am

Writer fills the entire background of the writable area with blue color whenever the page is printed. (Scan to be attached shortly.)

There is no blue shown on the print preview screen but there is a thin blue line around the image of the page. it is around the entire edge of the page and does not cover any of the margin or main portion of the page area. (Screenshot attached.)

Right now, my work-around is to disable color on my printer, but that solution is impractical for long-term.

Neither the Background nor Area tabs show anything set.

I purged LibreOffice from my computer to remove all settings and then reinstalled. That did not fix the problem. It still comes up, even when I try to print a blank default page.

How can I fix this problem?

UPDATE: When I removed the color print block on the print driver and attempted to print a page to illustrate the problem, the problem did not re-occur. I do not know the cause, I did not change any printer settings. But I consider this problem solved. Thank you for your help.

(edit: added image)

ajlittoz · March 4, 2019, 7:02am

Please edit your question to provide more technical details.
Describe the location of the blue line relative to page: is it drawn around the printable area of the page (excluding margins)? around paragraphs of the same kind?
You can get this information from Format>Page or Format>Paragraph, tabs Background or Area and Borders.

SamSpade1 · March 4, 2019, 4:01pm

Changes made, thank you for taking a look.

ajlittoz · March 4, 2019, 4:01pm

When editing your question, you can insert pictures with the “slide” icon in the toolbar. Similarly, files can be attached with the paper clip icon.

ajlittoz · March 4, 2019, 4:38pm

Your screenshot was taken while you were in print preview mode. In this mode, Writer puts a blue border around the “current page”, i.e. the page where the cursor was located when you entered print preview mode. This border is an “informative-only” reminder, so that you know where you were editing and, if in a hurry, you can focus your attention on this page.

The border is not added in any way to your file and does not print.

Apart from this initial visual clue, I don’t know what was intended with the feature because the blue border follows the (double) page currently on display. I haven’t discover what changes eventually when the border highlights a new page.

You can safely ignore this border.

EarnestAl · July 12, 2020, 10:42am

Problem probably with the printer. Some possibilities:

After market toner in a laser printer. A very similar problem was posted on HP forums where the poster had been using after-market toner for about three years and the colour gradually built up and smeared on the belt. After cleaning, replacement of toner units and thorough cleaning of the roller the blue tint was gone. See Solved: Re: Pages print blue - all over - not just smudges - HP Support Community - 6991074
Faulty printer driver. The original HP printer driver for the printer caused a grey background on greyscale documents, replacing the specific HP printer driver with a generic HP printer driver solved the problem. See Solved: Pages print with grey background - HP Support Community - 6699814
I have a recent Brother inkjet, bought March 2019. Originally, it used to tint prints slightly green and muddy dark, I compensated by increasing brightness, Contrast and adjusting the Magenta and Cyan settings. With every printer driver update I had to wind back my adjustments until an update about 4 or 5 months ago when I finally had to return all adjustments back to zero and the prints were printing quite closely to what I had on screen.

Cheers, Al