Trouble trying to set duplex printing as default

[BigKeith]

I am trying to set my mac to use duplex printing as default for my Photosmart 5520. To do this I go into the CUPS page for the printer and go to set the default options. I choose Two-Sides:Long edge binding as the default and then have to change the default paper size to 'A4 Two sided margins' to amke it compatible. That part seems to work fine, however if I now try to print something I always get an error come up:

"Changing the destination paper to A4 would cause a conflict that cannot be resolved. No change will be made."

I feel that this has something to do with the default paper size that I have set in the Printers sections of System Preferences. There it is set to A4 and I think that is what is causing the conflict error. However, in those option there is no option for A4 two sided margins as the deafult paper size.

What can I do to resolve this?

[RnRMusicMan]

Hi @BigKeith,

Welcome to the HP Forums!

I noticed that you are trying to setup the duplex printing as default with your Mac and your HP Photosmart 5520. I am happy to help with these settings!

For further assistance, I will need to know, the version of the Mac Operating System you are using. If you do not know the Operating System you are using, please visit this website. Whatsmyos. Also are you using A4 size paper? Or Letter?

In the meantime, please take a look at this guide. Printing on Both Sides of the Paper (Duplexing) in Mac OS X v10.6. This also works for versions up to 10.9.

Hope this helps, and hope to hear from you soon!

[BigKeith]

Thank you 🙂

I am using Mac OSX 10.9.4 and using A4 paper.

I am aware of the setails in that guide but I dont think that changes my default settings...

Cheers.

[RnRMusicMan]

Hi @BigKeith,

Thank you for your response!

Please take a look at this post, Re: Duplex printing option for a Photosmart 5520 from a Macbook, by @ShlomiL. 

Hope this helps!

[BigKeith]

Using presets does not seem to work. Other than being a pain in the but to set up use, they don't really seem to work anyway. I made a few presets including the double sided option. When I now open a print dialog and select the double sided preset, the double sided box is not checked! If I go into the show presets option, sometimes it says that double sided is on, other times it says it is off... for the same preset! Each application seems to behave different with it as well (Safari differernt to MS Office, different to Chrome...).

I bought this printer purely for its auto-duplex feature. Please tell me there is a proper way that I can set this to be the default? Presets don't seem to be the answer 😞

I also get this error every time I click the two-sided checkbox:

"The Two-Sided option, Long-edge binding, is not available when the destination paper size is set to A4.

To scale to fit to A4 Two-Sided margins, click Continue. To change Two-Sided to its previous setting, click Cancel."

[BigKeith]

I think I have found an interim solution, however, HP you MUST FIX THIS! This is a terrible way of having to set it up and it definiterly does not encourage me to buy HP products in the future. Please fix this and push a Mac driver update or printer firmware update or whatever is required.

Here is what I had to do but I am not confident that it is going to actually work all of the time 😕

The different applications seem to have different key names for each of the individual settings in a printing preset. So a preset made in Safari would not work properly in MS Office. However, if you create a preset in Word it sort of works in Safari. In Word's print dialog, I first set the paper size to scale to "A4 Two sided margins", then selected the two sided print option and saved this as a preset. Here's the weird part; the two-sided checkbox is ticked if I select the preset but if I go into the "show Presets" option that shows the details of the presets, it says that two-sided printing is off! The same weird thing happens in Safari's print dialog. It is because of this contradiction that I don't really trust this solution but it seems to work for now.

 

HP FIX THIS PLEASE!