I think excel needs to know how to render the screen images. It uses the
printer driver to show you what you should expect.

But I've never seen excel force you to have a printer on--mine is off right now
and I have excel open.

In fact, all excel needs is the printer driver--it doesn't actually need the
physical printer.

If your wife starts excel in safe mode, does she get the same problem?

Close excel
windows start button|Run
excel /safe

If no problem occurs, take a trip to Chip Pearson's site to see if his notes
will help:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

If you still get the problem, post back. Maybe someone else can jump in. (I
got nothin' more.)

Dave wrote:

My wife can not start Excel on the laptop without selecting a printer. The
printer has to be on to work. This laptop is not always used near a printer
or a network. Is there a way to disable this "feature"?

--

Dave Peterson