Waiting for printer connection

Anonymous
2023-12-14T05:51:25+00:00

“Waiting for printer connection” pop up started coming up a couple of weeks ago and has been causing multiple issues.

Excel and Word randomly do not open, and then when I open the program again it tells me the file is already in use yet nothing is open. Task manager shows nothing open or running. I have to restart my computer each time to use the document or workbook and I sometimes I need to do this more than once before it will decide to randomly work.

I cannot print new documents or workbooks, it becomes unresponsive and then the program has to close. I can only print from saved documents, which o can’t always open!

MYOB cannot print now, I have to save as a pdf and then print. I know MYOB isn’t “Microsoft” but this only started when this pop up started. I have never experienced this issue before.

This is happening on all four computers and started at the exact same time.

I have tried turning off all network sharing connections and still no change.

This is really impacting my day to day operations ans these programs are all I use. It causing a significant loss of time.

Can someone please help?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-01-08T13:11:05+00:00

    Yes. It still persists. I probably should have responded to this earlier but I’m just so over it I’ve lost all motivation to try and resolve it. All my Microsoft applications still become unresponsive multiple times everyday and I lose so much work having to restart the program. I’m confident it’s due to the Microsoft programs trying to find a printer but it’s just a part of life now.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-01-08T21:06:16+00:00

    I think I was able to fix mine, it's working on mine I'm getting another guy who's experiencing it worse than me to give a go when he's on, but mine seemed to be fixed by changing the default of Microsoft Print to PDF to A4, I'm in Australia so that's what we use here, here's where I went

    Don't forget to hit apply on the second last screen, I did go through and do the other guys test first, but that did nothing, then I did this then I had to try to undo what I did on his, maybe take a screen shot of the screens so you can enable the start ups you need again, hope it works, or maybe just try this first, if it doesn't work then do his but yep worked for me :)

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-01-14T21:35:57+00:00

    Just setting Microsoft Print to PDF as default seemed to work for me. The page size wasn't a problem (I didn't change it, I was already on A4).
    I opened one of the apps having the issue, checked the default printer was now the PDF printer, closed that app, then I set windows back to my original printer and no longer seem to get the issue when opening the problem app.

    I did have to turn of the "Allow Windows to manage my default printer" preference to the set the defaults manually, which may have been part of the issue. I haven't printed anything yet though. It will be interesting to see if the problem comes back after I printer something, then close an re-open my apps.
    Image

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-01-15T11:47:25+00:00

    Yep, exactly my experience - solved it by:

    • "Let Windows manage my default printer" OFF
    • "Default printer" MICROSOFT PRINT TO PDF

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-01-19T14:23:43+00:00

    Thank you for good solution. It works well for me. I changed default printer to PDF and it stops MS notifications messages.

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