Mac Printers - Top Printer Problems in OS X

According to a recent PC World article, there are three frequently encountered problems encountered while printing from a Mac. The solutions? Either a variation of unplug and restart, or purchasing a $30 program.

1. If there is no printer showing up when you try to print from a “File” menu, the article recommends deleting and re-adding your printer in the “Add printer” window.

2. But worse than the first, perhaps you’ve already tried adding the printer again, but you get an error message, the ever helpful, “An error occurred while trying to add the selected printer.” Again, the article recommends a restart, this time of the entire printing system. Under “Print & Fax” a control-click to the printers list will allow you to do this, at the cost of anything currently in the queue.

3. Worse than either, nothing is working, and now the article recommends a $30 program to fix anything and everything that might be going wrong with your printer.

It might not hurt to try resetting a few more times, and ensuring your printer has ink before shelling out $30. The program will perform permissions checks for you automatically, but you may want to give this a try yourself if you’re tech savvy or would like to become more so. It might be time not to fear your printer.