Mac and Printer!

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I have been having so much trouble with my MacBook Pro and HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus printer. When I first bought this I made sure it was compatible with the mac, so I should have no trouble with printing. I have always been printing wirelessly because I never found a way to connect it using a USB cable.. It prints fine except it won't print in colour. This is a big problem as I'm an art student and this is essential for school! The printer prints colour if I use other laptops so I'm guessing the problem is my mac.. What should I do? I need immediate help!
 

cwa107


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Did you check your print settings? If you have it set to draft mode, or some kind of ink-saver mode, it might not print in color. Also make sure you're not set to print in grayscale. The print settings will look similar to this:

2011-04-18_1454.png
 
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I've searched my print settings and I can't find anything which says grayscale or black and white or colour. Here's what my print settings looks like:

Screen shot 2011-04-19 at 12.52.05 PM.png
 

bobtomay

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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Try clicking on some of those drop down menus to check all your settings.
Each menu selection will have different and varied options available.

Start off with the one that says Copies and Pages.

But also check the varied options in Standard.

And the one that says Page Setup.

Almost every printer is a little bit different in the layout - you're going to need to learn your printer settings by doing some exploring through all the options you have.
 
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I've clicked and checked all the settings. There are two which seem to have something to do with colour but when I printed on those settings it was still black and white. I've had this problem for ages now and it's getting pretty frustrating..
 

cwa107


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I've clicked and checked all the settings. There are two which seem to have something to do with colour but when I printed on those settings it was still black and white. I've had this problem for ages now and it's getting pretty frustrating..

Have you tried getting the latest drivers from HP and installing them?
 
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I think that's what I'll do. I'll delete the drivers i have and then set up the printer again, if that doesn't work I'm not sure what to do.
 
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Hi,

You say that this printer has never produced a color document, have you printed the printers test page? If not I would do this first and check that there is not a fault with the print head.
If the test page is fine then it would defiantly point to a document print option setting.
 
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Hello,

My printer prints colour just fine from any other computer/laptop but mine! I'm probably going to have to re-install the drivers, the ones on the hp website don't load so I'll have to find the CDs and try it out.
 

cwa107


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Hello,

My printer prints colour just fine from any other computer/laptop but mine! I'm probably going to have to re-install the drivers, the ones on the hp website don't load so I'll have to find the CDs and try it out.

What version of Mac OS X is it? You definitely don't want to install the original drivers. You'd be better off going with the Gutenprint drivers if you couldn't get them from HP.
 

cwa107


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It's version 10.6.6. Why wouldn't I install the drivers?

Because Apple has updated HP's suite of drivers several times in the last 2 years or so. Reverting back to an older driver could cause more issues. You want to make sure you've got the latest and greatest.
 
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Oh, but what if I got my printer in the last 6 months? Shouldn't it be okay? And whenever I try to download the drivers from the hp website it never loads, so how can I get the latest one?
 

cwa107


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This is the right driver:

HP Officejet Pro Full Feature Software and Driver (Universal) - Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-All-in-One Printer - A910a - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Download it, but don't install just now.

Remove the existing printer entry by going into System Preferences => Print & Fax. Single-click to select the printer, then click the '-' to remove it.

Install the driver and add the printer.

This should set it back to defaults and get you on the latest version. If that doesn't do the trick, you'll want to call HP support and see if they can help.
 

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