Disable colour printing

[SachinRaje]

Hello

Have bought a new M277DW last week. Would like to know if it is possible to disable colour printing on the printer itself? I have many devices connecting to the printer and 4 family members using this device. It is very much possible that they forget to print in B&W mode. Just to save on the toner and avoid printing colour when not necessary, disabling colour printing at the printer level would be useful. Also, I should be able to enable it when required.

Please let me know.

Regards

Sachin Raje

[John_Getzke]

> Would like to know if it is possible to disable colour printing on the printer itself? 

No.  Controlling monochrome or color printouts is controlled by the print driver, not the printer.  To enable and disable color printing you need to configure your printer driver and printer printing profiles on the installed machines.  Administrators control print queues by centrally managing print queues through a print server.  If you do not have a print server managing and securing your printer driver settings and queues then users can connect and do whatever they want if they know how to do it.

If you really want to enforce monochrome printing with your family then purchase a monochrome printer and give them access to that printer instead.  Restrict access to the color printer to folks who are approved to print color only.  This is not always easy to do when working with family members, but thats how we do it in the real world.

Otherwise I'm sure by poking around your installed print driver you can find out how to set defaults for monochrome and color printing.  Its the managing of that feature that requires a little additional work and configuration.

[JeanJAB]

Hi Sachin Raje,

I do not know of anyway to disable colour printing on the printer itself.  This is a setting change you need to make in the driver. 

Here is a document that describes changing the print settings.  I'm sorry these settings are not available on the printer.

Jean

[SachinRaje]

@John_Getzke, @JeanJAB

Thanks for your response.

Is it possible to change the driver setting via / on Mac? I tried but could not notice any such option.

Also, the changes recommended need to be applied every time when we are printing. While this printer is being used by multiple users via multiple devices, there is a high probability of printing in colour when not necessary.

Thanks for your support.

Regards

Sachin

[John_Getzke]

> Is it possible to change the driver setting via / on Mac? I tried but could not notice any such option.

It should be although I am not familiar with driver customizations with Mac machines.  You will encounter the same limitations with Mac as you would with a PC where as any driver changes you make cannot be enforced.  A saavy user can still uncheck your preferances to use monochrome printing whenever they want.

> Also, the changes recommended need to be applied every time when we are printing.

Printer propterties and preferances can be set from multiple areas.  On a windows PC the Devices and Printers area will control printer OS defaults.  There are also application defaults and hardware defaults that then have to be configured in coordination with whatever the OS has enabled or disabled.  Any one of these areas can overwrite another if allowed to do so.

> Also, the changes recommended need to be applied every time when we are printing.

Multiple PC users is one situation, but multiple devices and OS is another.   A Windows print server will help you lock down print queues and defaults for windows PCs but I'm not sure it will help with Mac or Mobile devices.  For defaults to be effective you have to restrict how users connect to your printers.  In any case without a security system controlling who has permissions to modify the defaults of your print queues anyone who can connect to the printer can do whatever they want, assumign the hardware will allow them to do so.

If you are attempting to manage a multi user + multi OS + Mobile/PC enviornment then I would recommend investing in a monochrome printer and provide that to your users as their default.  Then offer a second single function color laserjet printer in select areas where color is known to be required for business.  We provide network connected multifunction monochrome printers to our office users as defaults.  When the business makes a case for color we provide a sencondary single function color laserjet.  This strategy has proven to be successful for us in reducing accidental color usage while still providing the functionaliy that the business needs.

We also provide M277s to our field users as a home office printer.  However these users are required to cover thier own cartridge usage costs which removes us from the decision on how best to manage thier cartridge usage.  At that point they can print as much color as they want, but they will have to pay for it.  All we do is offer them best practices for managing thier color cartridge costs.