Solved Printing from Word without colors

Yes, but those have nothing to do with greyshades or colors.

This is just a guess, but I think the reason I don't get the "Black & White / Color" option is that my printer is NOT a color printer. It can only print gray shades from black to white. But light colors in my Word documents print as light gray, which is barely visible on the paper.

Ah, a rather important bit of info that we didn't know, hence offering solutions that were never going to work for you

I haven't seen a monochrome only printer for many years, and honestly cannot remember if they offered a choice to print everything in 100% black only. You might want to check the printer and see if the configuration within it will force black only?

What do you mean by "the configuration within it"?

Many, but not all, allow you do configuration of the printer, alight print heads, clean print heads, etc. There may be an option there to print in the way that you want.

I read the whole printer manual, and there's nothing like that in the printer controls themselves. Or do you mean something that can be done on the computer, like under the Control Panel app or something? If so, I haven't found it yet.

Don't make things complicated. The color or black and white setting in color printers means to print in color or grayscale. In black and white printers the same setting means to send the page as color (RGB) to the printer and let the device convert to the appropriate gray shades, or make it grayscale before sending to the printer. For some models you get better quality to send the page as color while others don't handle the conversion very good so you get better quality if you send the page already as grayscale (the printer uses directly the shades without conversion). If you click the Advanced button more settings are revealed. Don't look at the User Guide. Just open the advanced settings and examine them carefully. There should be an option to convert all colors to black, it is just described differently between manufacturers to avoid copyright infringement. If unsure post screenshots of the advanced settings to help you. I understand that you may fear to open the advanced settings not to make any damage. Don't worry, do it. If you don't want any changes to be saved click cancel, not the OK button.

I understand. But the "color vs. black-&-white" setting doesn't appear for me at all. I spent the whole day (yesterday) on this; I went through the Advanced Settings and every other option there is. The place where it's supposed to appear is on the "Paper/Quality" tab of the Printing Preferences box. Compare the above two screenshots in this thread, one from me and the other from wimorrison. They both show the same tab, but his includes the color option and mine doesn't. There may be some driver that would work the way I want, but I guess that driver doesn't come up under the name "Brother HL-2270DW" because it's only a black-& white printer.

You still didn't post screenshots of the advanced settings. I am not familiar with the Brother printing preferences, so I cannot guide you without seeing it.

If I click "Advanced" I get this.

I guess this is the Microsoft generic driver for your printer. Download and install the official driver from Brother support site to get more features. There you should see an option to print in black (monochrome). Even if you install the Brother drivers it may not change automatically and you have to manually do it from the Printer Settings (not printing preferences), Advanced.

I downloaded the official Brother driver just to see the appropriate settings and guide you. After you have installed the official Brother driver, change the Print Settings to Manual and the click the Manual button. Then set the Contrast slider to the right end. See screenshots for details.

Thanks, but as I mentioned above, I've already downloaded the Brother driver.
That "contrast slider" is one of the things I've already tried, and it still didn't fix the problem.

But, as it turns out, late last night I found the solution:
Printing Preferences >> Advanced >> Other Print Options >> Density Adjustment
I guess both the contrast AND the density have to be turned up!

Thanks for taking all this trouble for me -- without your help it might have taken me a month to fix this issue!

That's why the forum is for. Glad to help.