Document will not Print

Problem:

  • Attempts to print a document result in a mail message stating that the document could not be printed.

  • The printer produces some of the expected pages and then either stops or produces garbage output.

  • Documents which printed fine earlier (even to the same printer) now fail.

  • The printer gets into an undefined state.

  • Nothing happened.

Suggestions:

  • For PDF documents,if you are using acroread (or xpdf or similiar) there should be options to set the postscript "language level". The language level controls the type of postscript generated and alters the features that it will expect the printer to understand. Some newer versions of acroread may only allow the level to be set to 2 or 3. Older printers (and even some modern ones) are much more likely to fail with postscript generated for higher levels (especially level 3). However lower postscript levels might mean that the resulting files end up bigger since less effective features (such as compression) can be used. Larger job sizes may upset some printers (e.g. those with little memory). You can convert your pdf file to level-1 postscript,
    	pdf2ps -dLanguageLevel=1 xxxx.pdf xxxx.ps
    Then xxxx.ps can be printed with the lpr command. As this may result in a very large file, you may want to run this command in scratch space.

  • For EPS files, sometimes when you print from gv nothing appears on the printer. This is because some eps files have the code to actually generate a page if printed. Others don't. gv (etc) just sends the file to the printer (not modified at all). Often you can remedy this

    • by adding the line 
               showpage
      to the end of the file to make it print

    • or run it though eps2eps. But this might generate a large file for some inputs, so you may with to run run this command from scratch space.

If you care about position/scaling of the eps figure you really need to include it in another document e.g. a tex file with \epsfile setting the position.

  • If the entire document simply won't print it may be possible to send a few pages at a time which may stress the printers less than the entire document.

  • If you are printing from the laptop network, make sure you have the correct driver for the printer you are printing to. Having the incorrect driver selected may work from some applications but not from others. Look under the type column on the printer location page to see which HP driver you need to select.

  • Printing single sided uses far less memory in the printer (since it doesn't need to buffer up information for 2 pages before it can print).

  • The printer may have run out of memory while processing the job (or a previous job on some printers which leak memory), and now be in an unexpected state. Once the printer has got into this strange state, it may need special treatment to get it out of it. Using preset (on lpd-serv) to reset the printer back to it's power-on-state may help.

  • If the printer system emailed you with a message along the following lines, (the so called OffendingCommand is likely to be different) 
       Your printer job (myfile.ps) [on s47] 
   was printed but had the following errors:
   %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: ����^B ]%%
   %%[ Error: unmatchedmark; OffendingCommand: cleartomark ]%%
   %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
   Thu Feb 10 13:26:52 2005: Queue penguin : ps : df224 : ** Unexpected output
    and the printer did not print the file; then run preset (on lpd-serv) to reset the printer. Try printing again. If the file fails again, try sending it to a different kind of HP printer.

  • If none of the above suggestions work email the departmental computing helpdesk including answers to the following
    • The computer you are having problems from, if it is a computer on the laptop network, also mention which operating system it is running
    • The command you used and the application (if applicable)
    • Have you managed to print files using that application before
    • Any feedback you got, maybe an email, maybe the printer printed a few pages of garbage
    • Can you print from other applications
    • The printer you are using
    • The location of the file in question, if you do not mind it being seen.

Please email any suggestions, corrections, broken links, or errors to itweb [itweb@damtp.cam.ac.uk]