Color Laserjet Pro M254dw Manual Feed for Legal

[Carabalda]

I am unable to print a legal size sheet of paper on the Color Laserjet Pro M254dw printer using the Tray 1 (Manual Feed). I have set the paper size for Tray 1 to Legal. I have set the print properties for this iob in Adobe Acrobat to use the Tray 1 with a Legal page size. When I send the job to the printer, I get a message on the printer that says "Load Tray 1 - Plain paper - Legal". When I push a legal size sheet of paper into Tray 1 (the Manual Feed tray) the printer accepts it and pulls it 3/4 of the way in, then displays a message saying something like "Tray 1 default is set for Legal Paper. Press Modify to change the default, or press OK to use available media." There's no reason to change the default, because it is already set to Legal paper. But if I press OK, the printer does not take the Legal sheet that's in Tray 1, but instead takes a letter size sheet in the main Tray 2.

I cannot get this printer to use a legal sheet of paper, whether it's set to pull from Tray 1 or from Manual Feed. It will only pull from Tray 2, which is Letter size paper. I have to use Acrobat to shrink the legal page down to fit on a letter size sheet of paper. Not ideal... and VERY frustrating.

Does anyone know how to manually feed (and actually use) a Legal sheet of paper in the Color Laser Jet Pro M254dw? Thanks in advance...

[Repairatrooper · Accepted solution]

Are you able to print other media such as letter size  from Tray 1? This will help to narrow down between a hardware issue or a driver/software issue.

[Carabalda]

Yes, Repairatrooper... I have printed both letter size paper, labels, and #10 Business Envelopes using the Manual Feed of Tray 1. I know how to use Acrobat to change the properties of a print job so that Tray 1 is used. But the printer is simply not doing what it's being "told" to do with Legal paper. It's baffling.

[Repairatrooper]

What printer driver are you using? If not already, try the HP Smart Universal Printer Driver.

[Carabalda]

Eureka! That worked well, once I was able to get the Smart Universal Print Driver installed. I first tried using the unzip and run the setup.bat method. But after typing in  a very long and complicated WSD Port name, and making up a Queue name and some other parameter the installer wanted, the installer said something like "The listed data are valid" but the installation ultimately failed.

So I went the route of Managing the printer and in Printer Properties, I chose to install a new driver using a "have disk" file I had on my hard drive (one of the *.inf files that got unzipped. I chose OEM102.inf, which was the most recent inf file that had been copied into the C:\Windows\INF folder. Once that was chosen, the new driver window showed an hp section, and when that was chosen I saw and used the Smart Universal driver that showed the version of 3.06.2.2503. Once that was successfully installed, I restarted the computer and attempted to print the Legal size, double sided document... and it worked perfectly.

After sending the print job from Acrobat, the printer paused to display a message saying a legal size sheet of paper was needed for Tray 1. I pushed my paper into Tray 1, and the printer grabbed it as before, stopping about 80% of the way in, then displayed a message saying Tray 1 was set as Letter size paper, and to either Modify that or choose OK to use the default. I modified the Tray 1 setting to use Legal paper, then continued and the printed pulled the legal sheet through and printed the whole first page. Then the printer displayed a message saying to flip the printed page over and insert it into Tray 1 again, and the second page was printed on the back of my legal sheet. PERFECT!

Thanks very much, Rapairatrooper. You really ARE a Trooper! Much obliged.