print black and white on HP Officejet 6700

[hpchili]

I have four new cartridges in my HP 6600 all in one printer. How do I set the printer to print ONLY in grey scale or B&W?

Thanks   chili

[Kyle_W · Accepted solution]

From the application you are trying to print from, launch the Print Dialog (File > Print).

Click the lowest selection box, which usually has the name as the application.

Select Printer Features.

From the Feature Sets, select Color Options 1.

Set Print Color as Gray to On.

From the Feature Sets, select Color Options 2

Set Photo Neutral Grays as Black Only

Click the Presets Dialog, click Save Current Settings as Presets, provide a name for the preset and save it.

You may now set and save an additional preset for color by setting the Print Color as Gray to Off and Photo Neutral Grays as 4 colors and save it as another preset for color.

The last used preset will remain for future jobs and you may switch easily by selecting the preset according your needs.

Best of luck,

Kyle

[timtam]

Agree!!!

HP is only about forcing customers to buy ink cartridges.

[JohnHJax]

I want to formally complain, it is simply ridiculous not to be able to defaul to black and NOT print becasue a color cartridge is out.  It is a scam if you ask me.  DONT use tech support they will tell you the same thing and it will take hours to figure it out.

EXTREMELY dissapointed and will not purchase any HP printers.

[Kyle_W]

JohnHJax and timtam,

That is just how the printer is designed. HP is not the only brand of printer that does this. Do a quick Google search for "printer won't let me print without color cartridge" and you will see other brands besides HP. I don't know about other brands of printers, but I can explain to you why HP printers are like this.

The Officejet 6700 has a print head built into the unit and it uses individual ink cartridges for every color. Black, yellow, cyan, and magenta. It needs all of the cartridges to have ink in them so that the print head stays primed. If the print head doesn't have enough ink for one of the colors and it is still able to print, the part of the print head for that one one color that it doesn't have any ink for can dry up and clog the print head; completely ruining your print head and potentially your entire printer, if the print head is not replaceable. 

So it comes down to this...would you rather destroy your printer and have to replace the entire unit just because you want to print black or replace the color ink cartridge at a fraction of the price? $139.99 vs. $10.99. I don't know about you, but that would be a pretty easy choice for me. Also, considering that all HP printers come with a one year factory warranty, if customers were allowed to just destroy their printers, HP would be out of a lot of money replacing these units every couple of months. That's just bad business and bad engineering. 

However, some HP printers do allow you to print ONLY black when you run out of color. For example, the HP Envy 4500. It has a black cartridge and a tri-color cartridge and no integrated print head. These cartridges have the print head built into them, so every time you replace the cartridges, you are also replacing the print head. This also means that black has it's own print head and all of the colors have their own print head. This printer CAN print in black when you run out of one or all of the colors. 

The difference between individual cartridges and black and tri-color cartridges mostly comes down to print quality. If you aren't trying to use color a lot and plan on mostly printing in black, I would recommend that someone purchase a unit that uses a tri-color cartridge.

Also, this is not the place to make a formal complaint. These are consumer forums and most of the HP employees on these forums are here on their own time to help. If you would like to make a formal complaint, you need to contact HP directly. Here is a link where you can find the appropriate contact information: http://welcome.hp.com/country/w1/en/contact_us.html 

Have a great day,

Kyle

[JohnHJax]

This is not a solution, of course I have tried Cntl P,  Frankly this canned response is not helpful you obviously have not ready the other 5000 posts.

NOT SOLVED>

[JohnHJax]

You cannont Print in Black and White if ANY of the color cartridges are empty.

Not Solved.

[JohnHJax]

You still CANNOT print if any cartridges are empty.

Also even if you select BLACK INK only it still uses Yellow.

I waist more ink on the Cleaning than anything, I dont print alot everytime I do its out of Yellow and I dont even use color.

Waist of Money.

[JohnHJax]

Thanks I realize this isn't the complaint area I really just wanted a straight answer on why.   Thank you very much for the explanation, I still feel duped and its a poor design, it ends up costing a ridiculous amount of money to print. 

Its obvious HP did this by design.  I've had many printers in the past this is the first one I ever had with this "Feature" even the (smaller) driver is so overdone with a pop up when printing Black and White trying to sell you more ink, ll be going back to a laser printer and it wont be HP at least I know what the deal is now.

Thanks again

Support = Good

Value = F+

[NDiaz]

Hi,

I have the HP officejet 6600 which I purchased last year. Overall I LOVE IT. However, given all of the issues with the ink cartridges being full blah blah blah, I decided to stop using colour ink and changed all of my settings to black/white/greyscale. My only issue is that my colour ink is still being depleted even though I its printing black and all settings have changed! Does anyone have the same issue or is there anything I can do so that the colour ink doesnt run out even though I'm not using it?