Printing in Chrome is loading preview forever

Question

On my website, printing has stopped work with Google Chrome (version 81 on Linux, if that matters). The print preview window is stuck with showing "Loading preview...".

While doing this, Chrome prints the following message on the console:

[30378:30378:0424/004907.441044:ERROR:CONSOLE(2990)] "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'marginTop' of null", source: chrome://print/print_preview.js (2990)

When I open the developer tools and set the CSS media type emulation to "print", the page is shown correctly as it would be printed, and there are no errors in the console.

How can I find out where the problem comes from and how to fix it?

Solution 1

I could finally solve the problem by resetting Chrome. However, I still don't know the root cause of the problem.

Solution 2

Resetting Chrome did not solved the issue in my case, I had to disable the Print Preview by adding a key in Windows registry.

As written in Pupuweb.com

Previously this print preview loading problem was able to resolve by disabling it in chrome://flags/#enable-cloud-printer-handler. However, enable-cloud-printer-handler, however it was removed in Google Chrome Version 84.

So to disable the Print Preview feature I had to add at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome a DWORD value named DisablePrintPreview with data 1, restart the machine and could start print again.

If you don't have the GPO Templates for Chrome you can create the keys manually or with the following line.

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome

To add the value in command line, run as administrator the following line.

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome /v DisablePrintPreview /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Create a registry file ".reg" and add the following, run as administrator.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]
@=""
"DisablePrintPreview"=dword:00000001

Solution 3

I had print preview taking almost exactly 2 minutes to load each time. Web Page and content type (PDF, google doc, html) did not matter. For my machine it was a messed up Preferences file in the Default folder. So if you have the same issue then try this: Open a file folder. Make sure in the VIEW tab window settings "Hidden Items" is checked to enable Goto directory C:\Users<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default Delete the file \Preferences

That's what worked for my machine. I did not have this issue on my other computers which are all synced in Chrome to the same google Account. Updates didn't help because they didn't change the default Preference file.

Good luck!

Solution 4

The problem is with an extension for Hewlett-Packard printers which is looking for "classic printers." Delete it and see if your print problems go away. Worked for me.

View more solutions