IMac printing help

[AndyT]

The old boy next door asked me if I could help install a new printer on his IMac laptop. I went round and loaded the drivwers from the disk that came from his printer and clicked 'print' from a word document and hey presto it works no problem. The document he had open had 800 pages so to test I just entered 147 & 148 in the 'to' and 'From' boxes on the print dialogue box... out came pages 147 & 148. He was over the moon and so was I as i've never used a Mac before.

5 mins later I get another call "Can you copme round again as we cant find the page containing the page selection"... No problems I went round and now when I click on the Print button I get a print dialogue box but the page selection is no longer there It just has No of copies, a check box for collate copies, a check box for print preview and another box at the botton with something about saving to a PDF...

So the question is"Can anone tell me how to get the page selection boxes back"? I've tried reloading the software, disconnectiong and reconnecting teh printer but no difference, I'm stumped

Any ideas please, I'm sure its something so simple as it was there one minute and not the next!!!

Many thanks

AndyT

 

[llotse]

If you choose to print from the 'file' menu in word you will get the dialogue box which should have a pull down menu to select the printer, a pull down menu labelled presets and a further pull down box below those. Choose copies and pages in that pull down menu and there should be the option you require there

 

[AndyT]

I don't recall the 3rd pull down box but will pop next door and have a check.

many thanks

AndyT

 

[cookie]

not sure what your neighbours problem is, but i do know that generally you don't need to load drivers for printers on macs. just plug them in and off you go.

 

[AndyT]

Just back from next door. The Imac is about 10 years old and the printer (Samsung ML-2160) is brand new.

I loaded teh driver from the disk that came with the computer and first time (and for about 3 or 4 subsequent times I could select which pages to print no problem.

As per Llotse's post I have checked the 3 boxes he mentioned and the first is set to ML-2160, the 2nd to Standard and the 3rd to copies & pages!!

Just below and to the right are 3 radar buttons with the top one titled 'All section tabs', the middle one (which is the selected one) titled 'current selection' tab and the bottom one titled 'Selection'. I should point out the bottom one is greyed out and I think thats were the problem is because previously below this there were subsequent boxes for 'current' pages and pages 'from' and 'to'. I think somewhere else a box is checkled or uncecked which doesn't allow the pages selection boxes to be shown (if that makes sense)..

AndyT

 

[ianf]

The print dialog is application specific, not generic like windows. What application are you trying to print from. That said if it's running some ancient version of osx or the application things could have moved on a bit.

Safari, Preview, and Word's Print dialogs all look remarkably different on a modern machine.

Word has 5 radio buttons in the copies&pages dialog, 'all', 'current page', 'selection', 'from:to', and the convoluted 'page range'. Selection is greyed out if the current textview has no selected range of text in it by default.

Preview is much simpler, just 'all', 'from:to', and 'Selected page in sidebar'.

Make sure the document is the foreground document, you might be opening print for another application otherwise.

Is there a 'show details' button bottom left. It turns off simple mode for the dialog box.

I think it's the application behaviour not the printer driver per-se. Though print drivers may load presets, so select the preset called default or similar 'Safari' for safari, and then try from there.

 

[llotse]

see if you can set the second pull down menu to 'default settings' then you may have the option back to choose the pages to print ? I think you may have saved your earlier settings as the 'standard' could be talking bollocks of course !

 

[AndyT]

Thanks guys, I'll go round again tomorrow as he'll be settled for the night now.

I did have it all working when I loaded the drivers and connected the printer initially and printed out several documents. It was only when I got home he called 10 mins later to say he couldn't work out where I found the 'From' and to' boxes and low and behold I can't find them myself now either. I know it does work as we had it working but don't know how to get it working again