Gmail, HP insists on printing to file
 

The printer newsgroup is still active. Posting to them an d a second
copy to win10. If you want the printer people to see the win10 answers,
best to reply to this one.


My brother is hhaving trouble printing from Gmail to an HP 8030
all-in-one printer. It insists on starting the Save File routine, and
lets him print to a file but never prints to the printer!!


He had trouble with his old printer. Every time He would have to call
the Geek Squad and they fixe it for no extra charge, but it was a
nuisance, for him and them.

So he bought a new printer, from the HP OfficeJet Pro 8030 All-in-One
Printer series.

It worked fine and he printed things, but yesterday he couldn't print
something and today he can't.

He's in gmail and he does Ctrl-P and he gets a box that asks how mnay
copies, shrink to fit, a couple other things, and has the name of the
printer at the top. He clicks Print (at the bottom) and instead of
printing, the Save File routine starts. The partial-screen box with the
diretories on the left, C:/documents at the top and below that a list of
things already in it, with a line at the bottom to name the new document
which will end in .pm .

So using TeamViewer we saved a copy (and next time we tried to print,
the just-saved copy was in the list of files as it should be) but what
he wants is to print the thing, on paper.

Nowhere on that first box is Print to File. Nor is there Properties or
anything like that. Is that typical for HP now? Does he have to go
somewhere else to set it to print to the printer? Was he -- hard to
believe -- supposed to right click on the printer name and uncheck file?
That doesn't seem intuitive.

Plus it worked a couple days ago.

I dl'd the manual
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06291142 ** and it has only 3 uses
of the word "file", all of which are about the File Menu.

Isn't it still part of the printer software whether to print to a file
or not. Or does Gmail make it a gmail setting? Googling
gmail "print to file"
I get all permutations except the one I want. Except in a question to
Adobe, and he's not using Adboe anything.


I'm submitting this now, and if I see more to ask about, in the manual
etc. I'll post back.

Thanks in advance.
Could he forward the email to another non-gmail email account and print
that?


**(It had some other weirdo number that didn't seem like a printer model
numnber but he and I are disconnected now. I can get it later.)

Gmail, HP insists on printing to file
 

On Sun, 12 Apr 2020 16:32:48 -0400, micky
wrote:

My brother is hhaving trouble printing from Gmail to an HP 8030
all-in-one printer. It insists on starting the Save File routine, and
lets him print to a file but never prints to the printer!!

Make sure the print dialogue is set to print to his physical printer. What
you're describing is what I get when I print to a virtual printer, such as
a print-to-pdf type of printer.

Gmail, HP insists on printing to file
 

micky wrote:

... bought a new printer, from the HP OfficeJet Pro 8030 All-in-One
Printer series.

It worked fine and he printed things, but yesterday he couldn't print
something and today he can't.
[Prints to file instead of printer.]

Hmm, you sure when he prints that the dialog that appears selecting a
target device for the output is the printer? Does a dialog appear in
the */unidentified/* program asking which device to send the print
output?

He's in gmail

Presumably that means when using some as-yet-unidentified web browser.

and he does Ctrl-P and he gets a box that asks how mnay
copies, shrink to fit, a couple other things, and has the name of the
printer at the top.

But is the physical printer *selected*?

After hitting Ctrl+P to show the Print dialog, save a screenshot, upload
to online file storage, and give here a link to the pic. Make sure the
printer is selected, not just at the top of the list.

Your Subject header is incorrect. It isn't Gmail that insists on
printing to file. Gmail doesn't print anything. It is whatever client
you are using to initiate a print function.

So using TeamViewer we saved a copy (and next time we tried to print,
the just-saved copy was in the list of files as it should be) but what
he wants is to print the thing, on paper.

Go into the Properties of the printer to see if it has an option to
print to file. Click on the Search icon in the Taskbar, enter
"printer", select "Printers and Scanners". Click on the printer. Click
on the Manage button. Click on "Printer properties".

Under the Ports tab, and assuming this is a USB-attached printer and not
a networked or wi-fi printer, is it using a USB port? For example, I
have Bullzip PDF Printer installed which allows me to "print" to a PDF
file, and it adds a port. I don't want the physical printer using
Bullzip's port for a virtual printer. I use the virtual printer to see
how the printout will look, not what a preview in a print dialog claims
it will look like. Too many times what I see is not what gets printed,
and I hate wasting ink and paper on printouts before getting them right,
or as best as I can.

Back in the General tab, click on the Preferences button. Dig in there
to see, including any advanced settings, to see if their is a file
option.

Nowhere on that first box is Print to File. Nor is there Properties or
anything like that. Is that typical for HP now? Does he have to go
somewhere else to set it to print to the printer? Was he -- hard to
believe -- supposed to right click on the printer name and uncheck file?
That doesn't seem intuitive.

Plus it worked a couple days ago.

The print dialog (per program) may have a history, so it remembers what
you used last as the target device to send the print output. That's why
I mention that you should check in the Print dialog that the physical
printer is actually selected, not just shown in a list.

Could he forward the email to another non-gmail email account and print
that?

It is still the Print function in the web browser that is handling the
print out, not the Gmail service running up on some server. In fact,
there is no Print option in Gmail's webclient. Some web documents do
have a Print option, but that issues a request to the web browser to do
its print function. You noted Ctrl+P was used to show a print dialog.
That isn't Gmail. That is your web browser showing a print dialog.

Gmail, HP insists on printing to file
 

Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2020 16:32:48 -0400, micky wrote:
My brother is hhaving trouble printing from Gmail to an HP 8030
all-in-one printer. It insists on starting the Save File routine, and
lets him print to a file but never prints to the printer!!

If a real printer is configured in the system, the print dialog should
have an option to select a printer. Don't know Windows. But in Linux
(Gnome) there is an option in this dialog to set any installed printer as
default, so with only one other click the file gets printed on what was
chosen in the future. Well, talking about Gnome here. But I suppose
that'll be similar in other distributions.

In the OS in question, this is the item that leads to surprises.

https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content...9jvDfUq20b.png

On the one hand, you can place a green tick mark on what
you think is your default printer. When you tick the box
in the previous picture, the OS flaps the print dialog
around according to your last printer section (which might
not be the green-ticked printer). You might not stare up
at the printer choice, and then your print goes to the
wrong printer.

The whole thing just looks like a 12-course meal.

https://www.howtogeek.com/362534/how...in-windows-10/

It's not that any one component part is "bad", it's
that the whole thing looks like a committee did it.
Nobody looks at the whole thing and tries to simplify it.

Of all of the features on that page, one feature needs
to be discarded. Pick one. That's what the committee
should do.

Paul

Gmail, HP insists on printing to file
 

Paul wrote:

Of all of the features on that page, one feature needs
to be discarded. Pick one. That's what the committee
should do.

Or just use printmanagement.msc instead.