Office prints boxes for letters
Q
After upgrading to Big Sur, all my MS Office 365 documents print with small boxes instead of letters. How can I fix that and restore normal printing?
AThe reason that you’re seeing all those boxes is that font substitution is occurring, most probably because the fonts expected by Microsoft Office 365 are no longer installed correctly.
For them to be fully usable, they need to be in the Fonts folder in your Mac’s main Library folder, and are normally installed in their own folder named Microsoft within that. You can check that using the Font Book app, which should list the fonts for Office 365 in a separate collection named Windows Office Compatible. Some of them like Arial may also be duplicated in standard system fonts which are found in /System/Library/ Fonts/Supplemental, and form part of the normal macOS suite. For those, the macOS copy is usually disabled.
The final step to check is that you’re using the correct printer driver. Try removing the printer from the list in the Printers & Scanners pane, then click on the ‘+’ at the foot of that list and add the printer back, using the macOS AirPrint driver offered to support your printer, rather than an old driver supplied by the printer manufacturer.