Printer offline-How can I change it to "on-line"

Anonymous

How can I change a printer that is networked from "off-line" to "online" to one computer?

Ours is accessible to my computer but not my wife's as her status is "off-line."

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Anonymous

Hi WVseagull,

Check the status of the printer at Control Panel. Set it to online if it’s shown as offline. If this doesn’t fix the problem, check whether installing the vista driver available at your printer manufacturer’s website helps.

Step 1:

a. Click Start, go to Control Panel and select Hardware and Sound.

b. Click Printer.

c. If the Printer is offline, it shows “Offline” status. If the Printer is online it shows “Ready”.

d. If the Printer is offline, set it to online.

e. Right-click on the printer and select “Use Printer Online”.

f. The display should change to ready when the printer is set to online.

Step 2:

If still you are facing issues, then update the printer driver. This should fix the problem.

Update drivers: recommended links

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Update-drivers-recommended-links

Hope this information is helpful.

Praseetha K

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

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84 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-01-23T14:55:24+00:00

I fixed this for some networked printers by turning off SNMP under Ports>Port Configuration in Printer Properties.

Bryce
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Anonymous

2013-06-29T11:37:59+00:00

The only reliable way i have found to do this is to go into Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Service find Print Spooler, RMB select Restart. This should reintroduce the Printer to the Print Spooler. For some reason when there is a network interruption the printer will go Offline and the spooler will never see as Online again until you do this.
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Anonymous

2013-04-25T13:30:48+00:00

This happened to me today. I am using Windows 7 64bit

Open Control Panel and click on Hardware and Sound.

Click on Devices and Printers. The printer should be shown.

Double click on the printer icon. At the top of the next screen it will show printer offline.

Click on this and a small box will open with the name of your printer. Hit OK

Another small box will appear with three headers. Printer Document View.

Click on Printer, and uncheck "Use printer Offline"

Hope this helps.
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Anonymous

2013-04-18T06:47:03+00:00

On Windows 7 Home Premium - there's no such option to turn the status on. I think I once had the same issue on XP or Vista and it was the same thing - no option.

I'm not sure how all these peoples in different forums are talking about this the same way - right click and change the status to on. So easy.

If it was like that - there wouldn't be so many posting about it.

And I'm not sure - why this has to be so hard? Why can't this simple option be found?

Or if it is a driver issue - why can't we get a message about that.

By the way - I re-installed the driver and that did not do anything.

Can you guys at Microsoft explain, explain?
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