A Diagnostic Approach Towards the Printer Offline Error
Updated on February 1, 2023 | by Manpreet Kaur Sandhu
There comes a time when you are in urgent need of printing a document, you reach out to your printer and give it the ‘Print’ command. To your surprise, it doesn’t print. Whenever this happens, it simply means your printer is offline. Now, you must be wondering ‘why is my printer offline?’ let me make it clear to you.
The printer is offline whenever it is not able to communicate with the computer and will not respond to any of your print commands. It is very easy to bring the printer online with a few simple steps and physical checks.
Sometimes this may also happen that the computer is taking the printer as offline but in reality, it is online and ready to print. This may arise because of an error between your computer and the printer. It may even happen because of a minor paper jam or a cable is not properly connected.
If you are still unsure of ‘Why does my printer say offline even when you have made all the efforts to get it online, the printer driver or software can be the culprit. This also depends on how old your printer is or from when it has not been updated.
After knowing what can make your printer go offline, the next query I am going to cover is “How to get my printer online”? Most of the users always complain about how to bring the printer online and make it work as before. On proceeding further, you will find several troubleshooting methods related to it and they will work for whatever brand you own like HP, Brother, Canon, or Epson or different operating systems like Windows 10.
How To Fix When Printer Is Offline?
Follow the tips and tricks mentioned underneath to bring your printer online:
Check the Printer and the Cables Thoroughly
First things first, make sure both the ends of the USB cable are properly inserted. If you have a network printer, check the Ethernet cable and for a wireless printer, it should be properly connected to the router and the internet connection must be working fine.
You can try using a different cable to make sure it is not at fault.
Set the Printer Online Manually
To do this,
- Go to the ‘Start’ icon and then open the ‘Devices and Printers’ section.
- Right-click on your printer and click on ‘See What’s Printing’.
- Select ‘printer’ from the menu and from the options given in the drop-down menu, click ‘Use Printer Online’.
Clear the Pending Print Jobs
For this,
- Via the ‘Start’ menu, go to ‘Control Panel’ and then to the ‘Devices and Printers’ section.
- Right-click on your printing device and click the option ‘See What’s Printing’.
- Right-click on the aforesaid option and cancel all the pending print jobs.
- After this, select ‘Use Printer Online’ again.
- Restart both the printer and the computer and check if it works.
Remove and Reinstall the Printer
You can even try removing the printing device from the ‘Devices and Printers’ section and reinstall it after some time.
Remove and Reinstall Printer Driver
One of the ways to fix printer offline error is to remove and reinstall the printer driver as follows:
- In the search box, type CMD.
- When the command prompt opens, type “printui /s /t2” including the spaces, this will open the Print Server Properties Window.
- Remove the driver and package for the printer you have.
- Again, add your printer driver and your printer must be showing online by now.
Additional Troubleshooting
You can even get your printer online as follows:
- Open the “Settings” section and hit the “Printers” option. Right-click on your printer and click on the option “Use Printer Online.”
- Check to see if there are any pending print jobs, clear them.
- Double click on the selected printer, open the “Printer Menu” and click on “Cancel All Documents.”
- There may even be a printer jam or job causing the printer to go offline.
- Try printing again to get the printer online. Print a test page and check if the error got fixed.
This was all about how you can get rid of the printer offline error whenever your Printer says offline.