Color Laserjet Pro M281 Automatic Paper Tray Setting Doesn't Work with paper fed inTray 1

[benleviboulder]

In the last few weeks my Automatic setting has stopped working when I manually feed paper into Tray 1 on my M281 printer. I've seen similar issues on HP forums with other printers, but haven't found a solution. It has nothing to do with the computer it's hooked up to, as I've experimented with manually feeding a letter size page into Tray 1 (it accepts it) and then copying a page, and instead of taking the Tray 1 paper, it uses paper from Tray 2. The Tray setting is set to Automatic, and it clearly knows it's got paper in Tray 1, but it uses Tray 2 paper instead. I've tried cycling the printer on and off, but it's the same. Firmware is 2019-02-18. Can someone from HP please help me figure out how to fix this issue? Thank you.

[John_Getzke · Accepted solution]

Paper tray selection can occur in several areas:

1. Printer configuration settings

2. PC driver settings

3. Application settings

4. Document settings

5. Print server settings

You will have to comb through all of the possible areas where the problem starts and stops.  This will require some trial and error testing, changing one variable at a time to see if you can isolate the problem down to its source.

I suggest starting with the printer. Make sure tray 1 is set to Any Size/Any Type on the physical printer control panel.

Then check the driver defaults for the PC.  Try uninstalling and reinstalling the software and drivers to set everything back to the defaults.  Try installing the printer on a 2nd PC and compare results.

Then try printing from different applications.  See if the issue is isolated to one app or document type.

Then see if the problem is tied to specific documents or not.  Create a brand new document and try to reproduce the problem.  Sometimes printer preferences are saved into a specific document that is generated by someone else.  You would need to work with the content creator to adjust the document properties if you do not own it.

Finally, check if a print server has any impact or not.  Work with your print server admins on this one if you happen to use one.  You can work around a print server by setting up a direct network connection to a printer if they allow you to.

[benleviboulder]

Hi John,

Thank you for your quick and useful solutions. As I first wrote, the problem seemed to be in the printer, as it showed up even when I made a copy using a manually fed sheet in Tray 1 and the Copy feature on the printer. Your first suggestion, to check the printer's default Tray 1 settings, did the trick... the Default letter size was set to Letter rather than Any. Once it was set to Any, it automatically grabbed the Tray 1 paper when I copied something, so I'll assume it also works for any computer-generated page I wish to print from Tray 1.