WHY DOES MY PRINTER PRINT OUT A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER AFTER IT PRINTS OUT A PAGE OF TEXT? (for example, in a word processor program, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works or Corel WordPerfect)

1) You may have noticed that, as you type in most word processing programs, the words automatically wrap around to the next line when you reach the right margin. These words that wrap around are in the same paragraph as the words on the line above.

2) To create a new paragraph, you press the Enter key on your keyboard. This moves the blinking cursor, which is the only place you can type in new text, down one line and puts a hidden character ( ¶ ) into your document to represent the Enter you just pressed..

3) As you type more text, you may be pushing down any Enters already in your document below the visible text area. (Because these Enters are invisible characters, you can't tell where the actual bottom of your document is.) If you keep typing, eventually these Enters get pushed down to the next page, and, when you print out your document, you get a blank second page with no text on it.

4) To correct this problem, click where your text ends, then keep pressing the Delete key on the keyboard until the second (or last page) disappears.

5) To check to see how many pages you have, look at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. If it says, "1/1" then this means that you only have one page. If it says, "1/2", this means that you have two pages and the blinking cursor is on page 1 (i.e., you are working on page 1).

6) You can also check to see how many pages you have by clicking on File, then on Print Preview. Press the Page Down key on the keyboard to see how many pages you have.

7) To get rid of the blank second page, keep pressing the Delete key until the "1/2" changes to "1/1".

Note: If a blank page prints out before the text does, or if the first page has a few gibberish characters on it, then this could mean that you have a problem with the printer software, or the printer cable is too long, or you have a scanner in between the printer and computer that is causing this problem. To correct this problem, you may have to update your software, change the printer cable, or change your configuration a little bit. See our Printer Troubleshooting Checklist for more information.

Tip: If you want to move a paragraph down one line, click once with the mouse just above the line or just to the left of the first character in the paragraph, then press the Enter key once.

Tip 2: If you want to move the paragraph back up one line, click just to the left of the first character in that paragraph, then press the Backspace key on the keyboard.