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.