Owning a printer is no easy feat, it can take days and days for you to go through a lot of steps to even get the printer of your dreams at hand. Firstly, the ordering process causes you issues as sometimes the printer ends up being out of stock, then the waiting for the delivery, and then, when it arrives, and you get excited to start the printer up, it says that it is offline and you need to get it online.
This issue can not only make you super frustrated but also get you annoyed for hours on end trying to figure out the best solution and settling to either return or get rid of the printer altogether. There can be a lot of reasons why your printer continuously displays the offline button, and for one reason or another, you don’t need to go lurking to the depths of the internet trying to search for your dream solutions.
Sometimes, there can be the easiest of solutions that you don’t even know to lie in front of you, all you need to do is take some time to do your part of your research properly and thoroughly, and realize that there will be a lot of learning curves around the path. Therefore making sure what brand to buy your printer from or where and how much money to invest in it deems important to get a proper decision in the end.
But you don’t need to worry at all about what steps you need to take for how to change printer from offline to online, instead you can unleash all the burden from your shoulders onto ours as we will be your official guide to tell you all that you need to know about the process.
Therefore, without any further wait from our side, we will tell you all that there is to change your printer from offline to online so you can easily resume your prints and get that presentation done and submitted on time.
Contents
Why it shows offline
We will list some reasons why your printer might show offline even though you connected it to your network and whatnot. There are many simple reasons why. Here are some of them.
Communication issues
Some of the main reasons are that your printer can’t communicate properly with your computer as it doesn’t receive any commands to connect, therefore the printer shows the word “offline”.
Wires
There can also be some wiring issues that can cause the offline button to pop up and annoy you again and again. And to solve that all you need to do is check the wiring that needs to be secured with your printer, and that should solve the issue, if it doesn’t, then keep reading on to solve your printer issues further.
How to Change Printer from Offline to Online
Now that we are done listing out one or two of the main reasons why your printer may show the word offline, let’s see how to change printer from offline to online, and get your printer up and running so that you can finally get done with the pesky jobs no more. These steps are for Windows computers mainly but you can use the same for macOS systems too.
Remaining prints
Sometimes what happens is that you might have clicked print twice for one document, but it only prints one, therefore, head onto your printer menu and sees if there are any remaining prints that you need to print and if yes, then go ahead and print out the final prints so it is empty.
Printer driver
If that does not work, then we might need to reset your printer driver, and for that, you can go ahead and open your search bar and search for CMD. After that, open your command prompt and open the printer server option that shows up easily.
After that step, get rid of the driver, and then click on the little “+” option to reconfigure your printer again, and once you find the name of your printer you should have the access to add your printer name. If the printer is HP, brother, canon, etc you should have no issues setting up the printer again. And this should show the status as “online” instead of the initial “offline”.
Manual labor
At the bottom of your screen, click on the “start” menu, and then from there head onto the “control panel” option and left-click your mouse on it. From there should be an option for “devices and printer”, again repeat the same step of clicking on your mouse and opening the tab. Select the name and model of your printer, and you will see an option called “see what’s printing”. Click that.
A menu will open up from whereon out you can open a log from the drop-down menu that will allow you to manually select, “work printer online”, and this will instantaneously change your printer setting from offline to online.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will these steps work guaranteed?
We can’t say for sure that they will work 100% as due to human error everyone is bound to make mistakes, but as a group, we do make an honest effort to give you the most elite arrangements and dispose of your issues for you.
Can these steps work with macOS software?
Yes, absolutely why wouldn’t they? The same steps that we listed for windows can get repeated for your macOS system, the only difference being some options and different clicks of the buttons and different commandments that you will need to follow.
Will the problem reoccur?
In essence, it should not, but if it does, contact the nearest official outlet of your name brand printer and they should further guide you on the processes.
Are there any easier solutions?
Currently, we gave you the best solutions that we found and could come up with, therefore unfortunately there is no simple option of only clicking one button.
See also: Check Out The Best Printer for Sticker Printing
Conclusion
Selecting the options of different brands of printers may get tedious and time-consuming at times, especially when you expect the printer to work flawlessly but it doesn’t.
This is where we dive in to take the problem (how to change the printer from offline to online) off of your mind and help you through it all. So go ahead and print whatever you desire now!
