A printer is an essential requirement in an office where a lot of documents have to generate on a regular basis and filed or sent to the concerned departments. However, it can be really frustrating when you find that the printer fails to respond to the Print commands from your computer. Instead, you get a ‘Printer is offline’ error message. So, it is better to learn how to fix printer offline issues and get back to printing the office documents like you normally do.
Now, this printer offline error could have happened for a number of reasons. Check to see if there is a long list of pending printing requests sent to the printer. If so, cancel these requests by going to the printer menu and selecting the option Cancel All Documents. This will clear all the pending printing requests from the system.
Turning the printer back online is the next thing to do. Go to the Settings menu on your computer, and select the option Printers. The connected printer will be displayed there. Right-click on it and select the option ‘Use Printer Online’ option to get the printer back online. This might work if the printer was only temporarily offline.
But, how to fix printer offline error if it was caused by some other issue? You have to check the printer first. Turn off the printer and turn it on again. Check all the connections to the printer to see if any of the cables have come loose. For good measure, disconnect and reconnect all the cables to the printer.
Now, restart the computer and try getting the printer back online as mentioned above and start by printing a test page first. If this works, you may continue with printing all the office documents as you normally do. If this too fails, then you might need to update the driver to get the printer working again.
For this, go to Settings again and select the option Printers. Right-click on the connected printer displayed there and select the option Properties. Now, the options for driver will be displayed under the General tab. If not, check the Details tab. You need to upgrade the driver by downloading the latest driver from the manufacturer’s website.
Your last resort is to re-install the printer in the system. Delete or uninstall the printer already installed from the system and install it again using Add Printer wizard. This should fix the printer offline errors and get your printer working again.