Print preview unavailable in Excel 2013

Question

When I click on Print preview icon in the Quick access toolbar, I get this message. I've never had a printer installed on this computer, and I've been able to open print preview before.

Short of installing a printer, what do I need to do in order to have print preview availble in MS Excel 2013?

Solution

MS Office applications like Word, Excel usually use your Default Printer and its properties to show a Print Preview. While you may not necessarily have a physical printer (Local/Network) installed, MS Windows 7/8 comes with a built in MS XPS Document writer as a Printer device and it gets selected as Default Printer as long as you have not installed any other printers in your system.

In absence of any printer installed, Print Preview may not work correctly or gives a message 'No Printeres Installed' as reported by OP in this case of Office 2013.

If the Print Spooler service in Windows is stopped for some reasons or in case you delete this default printer and there's no other printer installed on your system, print preview won't work.

As clarified by OP, the Print Spooler service somehow stopped resulting in no printer available. After restarting this service (which usually is configured to auto start with Windows) Print Preview works as expected.

In case you ever accidentally delete MS XPS Document Writer, there are steps to reinstall it from within windows as well.

Comments

[patkim]

What Operating System and its Version are you using? Assuming it's Windows, do you see Microsoft XPS Document Writer when you access Printer in Windows OS?

[FiddlingAway]

@pat2015 I'm on Windows 7 Enterprise. XPS Document Writer wasn't visible, until I restarted the Print spooler service. I have no idea how it got stopped. Everything works fine now. Thanks for putting me on the right track. Please post your comment as an answer, so I can accept it.

[patkim]

Good to know that you figured it out from the input. I have added an answer from the inputs.