HP Color LaserJet MFP M281fdw Always Offline Mac

[MichaelPinball]

I followed all the directions provided to reset the printer. The printer shows green idle, default for a few minutes and then red offline, default.

I do not see a way to stop the printer from going to sleep.

I reset the wifi. Although that does nothing but take longer to test. It was green. My wife tried to print. It was showing green on her mac. But it is doing nothing. I tried to print when it was green on mine after she tried to print. It is now orange and in use. with the printer icon showing at the bottom with a red 1 and orange tilde. It says "printing - looking for printer"

The printer is connected to our home wifi.

If I walk over to the printer and turn it off and on, it will work (for a few minutes and empty the queue). But this is not a solution.

I just ran a Wireless Network Test Report

In the Troubleshooting section it says:

More than one access point/wireless router has been found that matches your wireless network's name (SSID)....

I will try to figure out how this happened and if I can remove one and report back if this could be the issue. 

I do not think this is an issue. Xfinity automatically creates two wifi connections with the same name you provide. One is at 2.4Ghz, the other is at 5Ghz. 

I did notice that the printer connects to the 2.4 version when the rest of the world in my house connects to 5 version.

So I went into the Xfinity application. I split the wifi into two: one named "realwfi" for 5 Ghz and other named "realwifi2" for 2.4 Ghz. (This is not my real wifi name.) Then I went into the wizard and explicitly saw both wifi networks and chose the "realwifi" which says it connected at 5Ghz. Then I went back into Xfinity app and combined them back to "real wifi". We'll see if this works for than 5 minutes....

It is 30 minutes later. I was able to print. My wife was able to print. We will keep testing.

[MichaelPinball · Accepted solution]

I believe that ensuring that the printer connects to the 5G version of  my wifi solved our problems.

According to Xfinity, by keeping two same named wifi for the 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz is supposed to allow all devices to be seen on the wifi. But it appeared for some reason  that the printer was not playing along.

The solution is to temporarily split the wifi using the Xfi app from Xfinity. Call the 5 Ghz wifi the same name you currently use. Call the 2.4Ghz a different name.

Use the Wizard on the printer to connect to the 5Ghz wifi name.

Then go back into the Xfi app from Xfinity and merge the names by un-checking the split box. Make sure the name matches the 5 Ghz name you used above (which should be your original wifi name).

Hopefully this continue to work for us and could help you!