Before you try anything, work out which of these three things is happening. They have different causes and the fix is different for each.
- Nothing happens. You click Print, the job seems to vanish, the printer never stirs.
- An error appears. Windows says the printer is offline, or the printer itself shows a message on its little screen.
- It prints garbage. Pages of random characters, or a job that never finishes.
Try this first
- Check the printer itself. Is it switched on, is the screen showing a fault, is there paper, is a tray or door open, is a toner or ink warning showing? A printer stopped by a paper jam will happily accept jobs and print none of them.
- Check it is on the same network as you. If you are working from home over a VPN (a secure connection back to the office), or your laptop has joined a guest wi-fi network by mistake, you will not reach the office printer. Click the wi-fi symbol at the bottom right of the screen and confirm which network you are on.
- Check the right printer is selected. Click Start, type Printers, and open Printers and scanners. Find your printer in the list, click it, and choose Set as default. Windows will otherwise sometimes switch your default to whatever you used last, including Microsoft Print to PDF, which quietly makes a file instead of a page.
- Take it off offline. In that same Printers and scanners list, click your printer, then Printer settings or open the print queue. On the menu, if there is a tick beside Use Printer Offline, click it to remove the tick. A printer that was unreachable for a moment can get stuck in this state and stay there.
- Clear the print queue. Open the printer from Printers and scanners and click Open print queue. If there are old jobs listed, right-click each one and choose Cancel. One stuck job at the top of the queue blocks everything behind it, which is why the fourth attempt at printing a document never works either. Cancelling a job only discards the printout, not the document.
- Power-cycle the printer. Switch it off at the power button, then pull the power lead out of the wall. Wait thirty seconds so it fully discharges, plug it back in and switch it on. Give it two minutes to warm up and come back onto the network before trying again.
- Restart your computer. Click Start, the power icon, then Restart. This restarts the part of Windows that manages printing, which sometimes gets stuck on its own.
Printing garbage
Pages of random characters usually mean the wrong driver, which is the software that translates your document into something the printer understands. It also happens when a job was corrupted on the way. Cancel everything in the queue, power-cycle the printer, and try a single test page. If it still comes out as nonsense, log it with us. The driver needs replacing and that is quick work for us but fiddly to do by hand.
Why this keeps happening
By far the most common cause of a printer that worked yesterday and does not today is that its network address changed. Every device on the office network has an address, and unless a printer is told to keep the same one, the router can hand it a different address after a power cut or a restart. Your computer keeps trying the old address, gets no answer, and marks the printer offline.
That is worth telling us about rather than living with, because it is a permanent fix. We give the printer a fixed address and point the computers at it properly, and the problem stops recurring. If your office reboots the modem when the internet plays up, this is very likely what is behind your printing problems.
What to tell us
Send us the make and model of the printer, whether it affects everyone in the office or just you, the exact error message, and whether the printer is connected by a network cable, wi-fi or a USB lead. A photo of the printer screen helps.
Still stuck?
Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.
Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.
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