Color LaserJet M553 randomly selects Legal paper when Letter sized doc is sent to it

[NYC4Life]

One particular user (Windows 7-64 bit running Office 2013) has an issue where she sends a document to print through Word 2013 and it randomly selects either legal or letter paper, resulting in a prompt at the actual printer for someone to manually tell it to print from Tray 3 or it automatically prints from Tray 3.

No one else seems to be having this issue but her. The settings in her printer setup within Word 2013 seems fine. Any ideas what could be causing this?

Thanks.

[dansdaduk]

First thing is to try to establish just what is being sent to the printer (in order to determine if it's lilkely to be a printer problem, or a problem at the computer end (with application and/or printer driver - more likely from your description, since the printer works fine with other users).

So:

• What size of paper is loaded in tray 3; Letter or Legal?

• What size of paper does the printer think is in that tray? i.e. what does a Configuration Report (or the tray handling menus) from the printer state?

• Exactly what prompt is issued for tray 1? it will probably include both a paper size (e.g. Letter or Legal) and a  paper type (e.g. Plain or Letterhead).

[NYC4Life]

1. Legal Paper

2. Legal

3. Paper type

One thing I did not try yet is to remove the printer and add it back. However, we did check the printer setup on the server and it appears to be fine.

Besides removing and adding the printer back, any other ideas?

[dansdaduk]

I don't believe that the printer prompt you get (when the 'fault' occurs) is "Paper  type".

What EXACTLY is the text of the prompt?

[NYC4Life]

I am not able to give you the exact wording as I don't have it available. However, I believe it was along the lines of Paper Type (asking which paper is in Tray 3) and to confirm which type of paper is there.

[dansdaduk]

The wording of the prompt should tell us what combination of paper TYPE and paper SIZE (a combination which can't be satisfied with what the printer believes it has in any of its standard trays) is being requested by the print job.

I have to admit I'm still slight puzzled by your descriptions:

" ... it randomly selects either legal or letter paper, resulting in a prompt at the actual printer for someone to manually tell it to print from Tray 3 or it automatically prints from Tray 3. ..."

"... tray 3 contains Legal size paper (and the printer thinks this is the case) ..."

Thoughts & questions:

When you say "it randomly selects" are you meaning that:

• The Word application may (legitimately) ask for either a Legal or Letter size printout.

or (more likely):

• that you are just referring to the perceived situation at the  printer?

• ... or something else?

i.e. what is "it" in this respect.

If the printer only has Legal paper (but not Letter size paper) in its tray(s) (a configuration report would tell us just what the printer thinks it has available in terms of paper size and type in each of its trays), then:

• A print job requesting Legal size paper should be automatically printed from tray 3 (which you say contains Legal size paper), provided that there is not a confllct with paper type settings.

• A print job requesting Legal size paper and (say) Letterhead type paper should result in a prompt if the printer thinks that the type of paper in tray 3 is (say) Plain.

• A print job requesting Letter size paper should always result in a prompt.

[NYC4Life]

I am going to visit the user today for troubleshooting and get the exact message if it shows up. In addition, I am going to print out a new configuration page. I'll report back. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

[NYC4Life · Accepted solution]

I resolved the issue. Come to find out, it was due to the manual feed option being used at the same time the user was trying to print to legal paper. The manual feed option (Tray 1) is set for Any Type / Any Size paper. The printer will default to it if it is loaded with paper. Once I removed the paper and closed the manual feed tray up, all print jobs came out from the respective trays (Tray 2 - Letter / Plain, Tray 3, Legal - Plain).

The employees in the area the printer is in won't use the manual feed unless they are printing something that requires special paper that isn't in one of the other 2 trays and now know to remove any excess paper from the manual feed tray and close it up when they are done with their manual feed print jobs.

Thanks for your feedback.