Q: Two-sided printing option grayed out

you might have success reseting the printing system.

this will remove ALL printers from your mac and you will need to reinstall and reconfigure.

Mac OS X: How to reset the printing system - Apple Support

if you printer is connected to your network try using the IP address of the device (e.g. 192.168.1.xxx, or 10.xxx.xxx.xxx) instead of having Bonjour "find" it. It tends to be faster when communicating in OS X.

zippityz wrote:

 

I've updated the drivers, but when I try and print two sided, the box under "Layout" on the Print screen is grayed out.  Is this because OS X doesn't recognize manual duplex as true duplex printing?

The Layout section shows information based on the PPD for the respective printer. If the printer supports duplex printing, then the option will be enabled in Layout. So for your printer not having a duplex unit and thus no support for automatic duplex printing, then that explains why the setting is disabled.

So you will need to print on one side first and then reload those printed pages back into the Brother to print on the reverse side. The setting you want to use with the driver is Paper Handling and here you can select to print the odd or even pages first. Then after they have printed and you put then back in the printer, you can then select the opposite setting to the one used previously (i.e. even if you selected odd). You may want to try this first time with a document consisting of just two pages, so that you know which way you need to load the printed page.

The old way to do this was to select 'Manual duplex", but now we've got a new and much worse way:

Old boring way:

File > Print > Manual duplex > Print > Replace paper > Print

New "improved" way

File > Print > Paper handling > Odd only > Print > Replace paper > Paper handling > Even only > Paper order > Reverse order > Print

I wonder what will go next?

Too pat a response!  I have two printers that do duplex printing, but when using the CUPS or Brother PPD under older operating systems, the two-sided printing option is greyed out!

So, what's going on?  And,what's the solution besides the old, problem-plagued, paper-jamming, manual reverse, re-entry technique?!!  :-)