Microsoft Print to PDF fails

Microsoft Print to PDF no longer works.   Reports  "There is insufficient memory or disk space. Word cannot display the requested font."

It was working perfectly fine a few weeks ago (March 2021), and has been happily printing the same document for a number of years.

However, if i print to my crappy samsung printer the document prints fine.  but then paper is not a pdf!

to me this only indicates that it's a problem with the driver itself and not the document.

I can also print documents downloaded from microsoft ok using the print to pdf driver. 

some tests ive run have resulted in the document printing to pdf ok, but if i reprint it again immediately after, and making no changes whatsoever, then it fails.

i am also experiencing this failure with a blank document (created from normal) and pasting in a simple table from excel.

i suspect that there is an issue with accessing fonts due to the error message as reported (although that's never guaranteed to be accurate indication of the problem)  "There is insufficient memory or disk space. Word cannot display the requested font."

once the document fails to print, word then goes into an application meltdown and requires a full quit and reopen, sometimes using task manager.  all dialogs within the application appear completely blank, the fonts dropdown on the home tab becomes corrupt, as does the theme fonts list.  on a basic level this then this renders the "save shanges to document" dialog blank and inoperable.

using alternative procedures, applications, drivers and reinstalling is not a solution.  please do not suggest this in any response to this thread.

i have deleted my normal template, still not working.

the key point here is that this was working perfectly well for several years (printing the same document) until a couple of weeks ago when it failed.

thanks

matt

Update: 13 April 2021 05:20 UTC

the last known date that it was working was 21 February 2021, and it was only discovered to be failing around the 30 March 2021. During that period Print To PDF had not been used.

i have since checked my windows updaes and seen that the adobe flash player remover was installed on 8 March 2021. Perhaps this is the culprit? Not sure i had the flash player installed anyway...  KB4577586: Update for the removal of Adobe Flash Player

Installed the following update:  March 29, 2021—KB5000842 (OS Builds 19041.906 and 19042.906) Preview

This did not fix the issue.

Update: 13 April 2021 07:55 UTC

Upon further investigation of the Windows updates that have been installed onto my system I discovered the following had been installed on 13 March 2021.

March 9, 2021—KB5000802 (OS Builds 19041.867 and 19042.867)

Release Date: 3/9/2021

Version: OS Builds 19041.867 and 19042.867
Reading the "Known Issues" for this update there are 2 issues of which either could be directly related to the problem i am reporting.

Installed the following update:  March 29, 2021—KB5000842 (OS Builds 19041.906 and 19042.906) Preview

Release Date: 3/9/2021

Version: 2004-OS Build 19041.906 and 20H2-OS Build 19042.906

This appears to have solved the problem.

Further investigation here details some reports of known issues that also appear similar to that as reported....  Windows 10, version 2004 and Windows Server, version 2004  

Also, following reading this post here... Windows message center there is an entry for 18 March 2021 which clearly details the known issue (again, similar to as reported).  There is a note within this text that suggests to only install the update if experiencing problems. 

Conclusion:   13 April 2021 08:42 UTC

So, my conclusion is that Microsoft know of this issue and have addressed it in a subsequent update.  The offending update was this March 9, 2021—KB5000802 (OS Builds 19041.867 and 19042.867).  However, as i understand it, an update is not being rolled out, or certainly hasn't been to this date, as a cummulative update that fixes the known issues. I believe this is left down to the user to install.

finally, thanks to the suggestion from Dirk, .