Papercut - Colour Detection Issues - I'm going mad

[Steve21]

Morning All,

 

I feel I'm going mad here, but can't for the life of me work out what's up with this.

 

We've recently had a new set of MFPs replace our old ones so thought it was a good time to upgrade Papercut to, and we seem to have some random issues that I've never seen before and can't work out what's up.

 

Cost wise we have B/W 1p and Colour 5p as standard, Yet when printing through different programs to the same queues it's working it out as a different colour.

 

As an example:

 

Print Excel with 1 Yellow Box to Colour Print should be 5p yet is 1p and shows as Grayscale:

 

 

Print Excel with All Yellow Box to Colour Print should be 5p yet is 1p and shows as Grayscale (thought it might be some weird % of coverage detection):

 

 

Yet Print One Black Text/Word in Word to Colour Printer and it agrees it's colour (as expected as it's that printer) and charges 5p:

 

 

Am I going bonkers or shouldn't they all be 5p and all detected as Colour? Not sure why a different program is working it as a different costing etc

 

Steve

[mikkydoos]

@Steve21 Are you using scripts for users to choose between colour and mono.. if so, pop it up.

 

 

Have you printed them to see what comes out? Is background printing turned off in the programs ?

 

It should be if you had even a coloured full stop in a doc it should charge colour.

 

EDIT: Also, if you're printing black only in Word, surely it shouldn't charge 5p, it should query the queue and detect that its mono and charge accordingly.

Edited September 28, 2017 by mikkydoos

[Steve21]

We have it setup as two seperate printers from how it was before I joined, rather than the scripted detection etc. So the two printers are setup, B/W auto'd to grayscale, Colour on Auto Detect etc. So even the text when sent to the colour printer is "colour" for all purposes, that's why I'm confused what's hapepning.

 

The colour aren't backgrounds even things like Cell shading in tables doesn't trigger it in certain programs it seems. Will have a better dig into Excel settings to see if we have anything else like that, but sure it never did this before the new printers Will double check that in case I did something silly in the settings for those programs!

 

Thanks,

Steve

[mikkydoos]

We have it setup as two seperate printers from how it was before I joined, rather than the scripted detection etc. So the two printers are setup, B/W auto'd to grayscale, Colour on Auto Detect etc. So even the text when sent to the colour printer is "colour" for all purposes, that's why I'm confused what's hapepning.

 

2 print queues set up for one physical printer? Or 2 printers, one colour one mono?

 

How do the users choose which is which?

EDIT: Doh. You have 2 queues.

 

 

I've got a script if you want it.

Edited September 28, 2017 by mikkydoos

[MatthewL]

Have you got your printers set to page level detection or standard level detection?

[Steve21]

There's 8 MFPs, 2 virtual queues one for colour and one for B/W as it's setup for FollowMePrinting.

 

So basically users have a FMPMono and FMPColour printed deployed if that makes sense

 

Wouldn't mind having a nosy sure, I need to change this over sometime for another reason anyway, just left it be while sorting other bits

 

Thanks,

Steve

[Steve21]

Have you got your printers set to page level detection or standard level detection?

 

Standard level, but that should do the whole document from my understanding. Page is smarter where if one is colour one not it'd charge 5+1, but standard should be 2x5 right?

 

Thanks,

Steve

[mikkydoos]

Heres ours. Its pretty simple. Chooses between colour and mono on a single papercut queue. You could add in your shared account PIN etc.

 

---------------------------------------------

 

/*

* Color print jobs require user confirmation

*

* Color printing is expensive so users should be encouraged to print

* in grayscale whenever they print in color. No confirmation is required

* for grayscale jobs.

*/

function printJobHook(inputs, actions) {

/*

* This print hook will need access to all job details

* so return if full job analysis is not yet complete.

* The only job details that are available before analysis

* are metadata such as username, printer name, and date.

*

* See reference documentation for full explanation.

*/

if (!inputs.job.isAnalysisComplete) {

// No job details yet so return.

return;

}

 

if (inputs.job.isColor) {

/* Color job, ask the use if they want to print. The job cost is displayed

* prominently to encourage users to consider black and white printing instead.

*/

var response = actions.client.promptPrintCancel(

"This print job is color"

+ " and costs " + inputs.utils.formatCost(inputs.job.cost)

+ ". You can save money by printing the job in grayscale.

 

"

+ "Press Print to Print in Colour. Press Cancel to convert to Greyscale",

{"dialogTitle" : "Color print job",

"dialogDesc" : "Consider printing in grayscale to reduce costs"});

if (response == "CANCEL" || response == "TIMEOUT") {

// User did not respond, cancel the job and exit script.

//actions.job.cancel();

actions.job.convertToGrayscale();

 

return;

}

}

}

​

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

Apply it to your Virtual print queue (Follow Me)

Edited September 28, 2017 by mikkydoos

[Steve21]

I may be missing the obvious, but in my scenario wouldn't they script have the same issue? As it's being flagged as Grayscale already, it'd not give the option to print in colour.

 

I know that's just the way to move forward and thank you for the example as will need to do some testing with it

 

Thanks,

Steve

[mikkydoos]

Well, I'd get rid of 2 queues for a start hence posting the script.

 

Check that the drivers aren't forcing mono. I know its a charging issue but all papercut does is hijack the windows print queue. I think you might have some inconsistent settings in your drivers.

 

E.g. You print colour, the driver forces mono but papercut still sees that its a colour print.... or vice versa.

[Steve21]

Well after a lot of abuse at print drivers it seems to be an Excel thing that's just dumb beyond belief

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2526211/print-options-in-excel-are-applied-per-worksheet

 

Basically if your default printer is set to B/W when you open a worksheet, it'll pull those settings across even if you change printer to colour...

 

So B/W Default = B/W print whether B/W or colour printer selected only when using Excel, Set Colour as Default before opening Excel and it'll print in Colour.... Swear it never did this before even though it's "normal" according to MS....

 

Anyone else who uses papercut fancy testing this? Set B/W as your default printer before opening Excel, then make a colour Excel sheet and print to colour and see what it comes out as.

 

Thanks,

Steve

Edited October 2, 2017 by Steve21

[mikkydoos]

I've tried that for you @Steve21

 

Works as it should for me...

 

Mono set in the driver ---> Open Excel (2010) ---> change driver to automatic ---> colour the sheet and print ---> comes out colour.

 

Tried this on both the actual print driver, and the virtual queue.

 

Works as it should..... but I've got that script I previously posted that may be different to your setup.

[Steve21]

Boo! Think Mik I'll have a play with re-doing this setup over half-term and making it a single queue with your script as a test to start with. Only way I can see to resolve this without causing hassle setting colour printer to default!

 

Thanks,

Steve

[mikkydoos]

Y I think you're maybe confusing Pcut a little bit. What if you print test pages or the spreadsheet directly to the printers bypassing papercut. What happens then ?

[MatthewL]

If when creating both Excel and Publisher documents if the document is printed before it is actually saved it retains the printer settings from that computer it was saved on. Biggest issue I see is Excel if some have hold print setup via the drivers and others don't but the black and white thing is another one. It's common across various print drivers.

[kearton]

What make MFP are you using? (We've experienced colour detection problems with RISO printers before)

[Steve21]

Sooo... basically it's windows being stupid! After a very long and annoying search and destroy we found the issue.

 

Apparently there's an issue with using printer names over 31 characters long (including server names, slashes and spaces etc) and a lot of programs who use devmode truncate the printers names above that. So if you have a name like FollowMePrinting Colour and FollowMePrinting Mono etc etc it'll cut anything over 31 chars, and then if they match it won't swap settings when you change between them!

 

Shortened the names of the new printers and magically all works again!

 

Ref here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/the_microsoft_excel_support_team_blog/2014/08/15/excel-print-settings-do-not-change-when-switching-printers/

 

Seems to affect a lot of programs too though, so thought it might be useful for people if they ever run into it

 

*stabs printers*

 

Steve