How to Troubleshoot Printer status Offline

 

How to fix when printer status is offline ?

If you are trying to print something in the Windows or Mac operating system, and it is not printing and comes up as printer status offline, then the problem could be that the printer is not connected to the computer either wired or wireless. You will not be able to print unless the printer is back online. To turn your printer back online, you just have to turn on the printer and wait for a few seconds and see if the printer status changes from offline to online.

Unfortunately, turning your printer from offline to online is not that easy. The printer might remain offline even if the printer is connected to the PC and is turned on. There may be various reasons why computer is not detecting the printer connected to the network or to the computer, and a few solutions to the problems are discussed below.

Power Cycle Devices

The first thing that you need to do before getting deep into the tools and settings is to try to power cycle the computer, printer as well as wireless router. This can help to fix the problem many a times. You just need to turn off the router, computer and the printer. You can then power on the router and wait until it gets back ON then turn the printer ON and see if it is connected back to the network. If you are making use of a USB cable to connect the printer, you need to wait until the printer is done with the start up process.

After the printer is turned ON, you can turn ON the computer to see if the printer is still offline. If the printer is still in offline mode, you need to make sure that the printer is turned off completely and not in the power saving mode or sleep mode. If you are not sure of this, the best thing that you can do is to unplug the printer completely and wait for about 30 seconds before plugging it back again.

Re-install Printer Software

If you find that the printer is still showing offline, you can try to make use of the printer software to bring it back online. These utilities will be able to find the printer available on the network and fix problems that are making the printer offline. You may also visit the support website of your printer to download the software. For instance, if you are using a HP printer, you can navigate to the support website and type in the model number to download the full featured software necessary to maintain and manage your HP printer. This is applicable to almost all the printer models.

On running the software package, you will be able to see the status of the printer that is connected to the computer and will offer additional details of the printer like the ink level on cartridges, paper in the tray, and so on.

If you are not sure about the presence of printer software in your computer, you can confirm this by going to Settings, choosing Devices and printers, and then select Printers & Scanners. If you are using Windows 10 operating system, it will be listed out printers that are connected to the computer. once you find software package available to manage the connected printer, it will display App available for this device. Click on the printer, and then click on Manage to reach out Open printer app button.

Set Printer Online

At times, even if the printer is connected and online, incorrect configuration of the settings might prevent you from using it. To check this, you can open the printer queue by visiting Devices and Printers in the Control Panel and then double clicking on the printer. You need to click on the printer shown in the menu bar and uncheck Use Printer Offline and Pause Printing checkboxes.

Check Printer Port

If none of the above steps has worked, the problem might be with the port configuration of the printer. Most of the times, this applies to the wireless printer that has an IP address. The cause of the issue can be a change in IP address of the printer and the port configuration still pointing to the old IP address of the printer. If this is the case, you need to find the IP address of the printer. This can be done by printing the network configuration page of the printer.

After getting the IP address, you can go to Control Panel, select Devices and Printers, and then right click on the printer that you need to troubleshoot. Make sure that you select Printer Properties, and not the Properties button located at the bottom. Select the Ports tab and scroll down to reach the port that is checked. Choose it and click on Configure Port. A dialog box will be opened letting you know the IP address that it thinks that is assigned to the printer.

If you find that the current IP address of the printer is different from the one that is listed here, you can be sure that this is causing the problem. You just need to update the IP address and everything will be good to go. If you still face the problem, get in touch with our technical support team for advanced troubleshooting to get it fixed.