Want B/W standard printing only - HP Officejet Pro 8500 Plus.

[Cartman9090]

Want B/W only - HP Officejet Pro 8500 Plus.

I wonder how to activate this machine to ALWAY use B/W cartridge.

I have heard that the printer may use color cartridges even if I print black only. I want to save the color cartridges for photo printing only.

How can I ensure this? I cannot find any settings in printer display saying "use b/w printing" .

And If there is a setting somewere for this; which setting "desides" - if I after setting b/w in standard printing, chose color in windows print setting for a photo? I never need color print except if I print a photograph.

I also wonder if there is a way to bypass the situation when one color is empty, and black/white printing therefore ends.....!?

Help appreciated!

[MaryChris]

Hi,

I don't think there is any way to have your machine itself control the color (or lack of color) printing. The application you're using to print usually controls that. Here are the basic directions for most Windows-based applications:

1. In the program being printed from, click File and then click Print. The Print dialog box appears.
2. Select the correct product and then click Properties. The Properties dialog box appears.
3. Click the Color tab.
4. Click the checkbox by Print in Grayscale.
5. Click OK to save the settings.

Your type of printer is designed so it has to have all the cartridges in good condition to run properly. A little of the colored inks will be used during a cleaning cycle to keep the nozzles clear, and might be used for some shades of gray. There are printers that can be used with empty cartridges, but this is not one of them. 

[Cartman9090]

Mary:

" 4. Click the checkbox by Print in Grayscale."

I have seen this choice, and I thought I should use "Black Inc Only" in this checkbox to ensure a minimum use of color??

[MaryChris · Accepted solution]

You ask some tough ones

It depends on what you're printing. I don't think any printer uses much (if any) color with grayscale.

However, if you tell it to use Black and White only (usually an option after you have clicked the Grayscale checkbox), it will not print anything but black. The bad thing about that is that you can sometimes lose part of what you are printing if there are pictures or colored font in what you want to print out. Anything that is not seen by the application as a true black might not show up in the printout.

It could work out well, if you're careful, but you might occasionally have something missing in the printout.

[Cartman9090]

Thanks again Mary, I'm learning:-)

[LadyPhade]

I have this same printer and have had a huge problem with inks and printing. I as well wanted to print something in black and white and changed it through property settings when printing but because my magenta ink was out or low on ink, it would not let me print in black and white (completely stupid since you do not need magenta to print in black)

As far as setting your settings to print in black and white everytime, this is not the smartest of things either but I have the problem where you have to take the time to change it to grayscale or black and white only every single time you print or the default is it automatically prints in color. I am wondering if there is a way that you can set and save the setting that the default print would be in black and white and/or grayscale with the option to change it to color if you wanted to print something in color to save ink. Foreign people like my dad do not know or take the time to go into properties and change it to grayscale every single time and in return he goes through color cartridges so quickly and those **bleep** things are costly.

Anyone know if there is anyway to change your default to black and white so it prints in grayscale or bl/white automatically? and if u want to go into properties to change to color you could do that???

????????????????????

please help

[MaryChris]

Hi again Cartman,

Glad I was able to help!

[MaryChris]

Hi LadyPhade,

Looked it up and it appears that you can change print settings from an application or the printer driver. Changes made from an application take precedence over changes made from the printer driver. However, after the application is closed, the settings return to the defaults configured in the driver.

It gives the following steps to change the default settings for all future jobs (Windows):

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Printers or Printers and Faxes.

 - Or -

 Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Printers.

 2. Right-click the printer icon, and then click Properties, Document Defaults, or Printing Preferences.

 3. Change the settings that you want, and then click OK.

Those steps worked for me to get to the grayscale setting for my printer and the OS is Vista, so they should work, with pretty much any Windows version. If they don't work for you, you might need to download the HP print driver which is available on HP.com.

[GreatRelief]

My older HP Color Laserjet 2840 has Color driver and for B/W only driver for XP, which is very handy. But HP no longer support the same B>W driver when installed in Win-7.

Does anyone know any model for Win-7 has seperately drivers in HP printer model?

[GreatRelief]

If I setup 2 printers, one default to color printing and the other printer set to Gray printer, and every time when you want printe the gray one, just select to gray-mode that one, will this owrks?