November's Windows update can stop some documents printing, because of pictures nobody can see

You press Print, the printer stays silent, and the document looks perfectly normal on screen. If that started this week, the November Windows security update may be to blame. Microsoft has confirmed that printing "might fail for documents containing images rendered with a height or width value of zero" once the update is installed.

The strange part is that you'd never know those images were there. Microsoft says these invisible objects turn up in complex formatting such as watermarks and layout anchors, and that programs which generate documents automatically put them in too. A letter built from an office template, an invoice exported from accounting software or a form downloaded from a website could carry one without anybody adding it on purpose, and The Register notes that a single such object can make the whole printout disappear. The confirmed case is Microsoft Word printing through GDI, the long-standing Windows printing route, though Microsoft warns other programs might be affected. The affected list runs from Windows 11 26H2 back to Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.

Microsoft says it's investigating and hasn't offered a workaround or a date. Uninstalling the update to get printing back is a poor trade, since the same update closes an Outlook flaw that's already being exploited. If a document has to go out today, saving it as a PDF and printing that from a different program is worth a try, though Microsoft hasn't said it helps. It's the second time this year printing has tripped over an update, after August's font problem.

If nothing prints at all, from any program, the cause is probably something else, and Tendvane's printer repair wizard is a sensible first stop; for this particular bug, the fix has to come from Microsoft.