Printing question marks in boxes

Hello People , Update

I have called HP and there is a solution without updating firmware. What you can do is go on Mac to printers and scanners and delete the printer. Then add new printer and select in the box usage: PCL Printer or Post Script Printer. Both worked for me.

One means for me only black and white and the other one was with colour printer. Any way with this I was able to print again. Of course you can call HP and they will assist you with this problem. This was a easy fix and they are aware of the issue and finding solution. Some were was asked Duplex , say yes to this option. Good luck

I had this exact same problem printing excel and word files. It seemed to have come out of nowhere. I just worked with HP and it was a super simple fix. Delete your printer, re-add your printer, select Generic PostScript Printer. This solved all of my printing issues.

I have a Macbook Pro, fully updated and the HP Pagewide Pro MFP 477dw printer.

A Laborious Workaround, But It Works.

This allows me to print without uninstalling my PageWide print drivers. I still need my printer's scanning functionality, so replacing my PageWide drivers with a simple PostScript driver is not an option.

1. With an Office document open, click the File pull-down menu and click Print.
2. In the Print dialog box, find and click the PDF drop-down menu in the lower left.
3. From that menu, click Save as PostScript.
4. In the Save dialog box, provide a name for this file (maintain the .ps extension), and save it to a temporary location (perhaps the Desktop).
5. Once the file saves, find it and right-click it.
6. Hover over Open With, the click Preview.

The Preview app will open that PostScript file and convert it to a PDF. Print from the Preview app. Important: This conversion process from PostScript to PDF will allow the Office document to print to your PageWide printer. Printing to PDF from the Office app will still print the boxed question marks.

After you're done printing, you can delete that PostScript file.

My 2 Cents

Dear HP: Shame on you for preventing customers of your expensive printers from printing Office documents. It's completely unacceptable.

Security is Probably Why: A couple of months back, Microsoft had to completely overhaul it's print mechanism due to a significant security threat. I suspect this could be the root reason why we poor Mac users are dealing with this nasty print bug. I could be totally wrong, though. But the coincidence seems suspicious.

Just got off the phone with HP support. I've tried suggestions here, websites online, and HP's own knowledge base to fix the Pagewide 577dw I just upgraded with a secondary tray. Noting worked. We deleted the printer and then added it via the IP address option (you can find the IP address on the network settings on the printer menu) when adding a printer from system preferences and chose Generic PCL printer. The printer has been printing Word Docs fine now (no more squares with ? in them) and seems to recognize all my usual fonts. All trays are available, but the trays in the PCL print menu don't match the tray numbering system on the HP Printer. Just put different media in all the separate trays to figure out which is which and then create a print Preset in the print menu labeled with the correct tray number to print from.

As far as the HP support guy said, there is still no other work around and this is as close to the HP software fix we could make happen.

Hi there,

an update:

the troublesome FW release was: 2127A.

After I've got a version from HP (2012A_05182020) I had problems installing the software via USB. The forced refreshing, stopped at the verifying .... for ever.

I tried doing today a normal update via EWS, there is a new FW release: MAVEDWPP1N001.2132A.00.. still presents the same problem.

Read on a German forum an eventual solution, instead of printing over AirPrint select, when you install the printer, General PostScript Printer. It's an intermediary solution but works.

Greetings from The Dolomites

/Maximus

I had the same issue on all of our apple devices. After spending some time on the phone with HP they managed to resolve this.

We had to remove the Printer from the computer and install the driver using a dropbox link. Once this was installed we had to re-add the printer and change the use to: HP PageWide Pro 477 MFP

This allows the printer to function as before and print as normal again.

[Link edited by Moderator]

I contacted HP who gave me a link to a FTP-Server. I downloaded an old firmware, saved it on a USB-Stick and everything worked fine (like before). Dont forget to turn off automatic updates in the printer menu.

I can only recommend to contact the HP support again!

My HP PageWide 477 installed a firmware update, and I was able to print clear Word documents from my iPad and MacBook Pro.

Firmware version is MAVEDWPP1N001.2142A.00, dated 2021-10-13.

I hope everyone has the same success!

I can print PDFs no problem from my iPhone using AirPrint. For the Mac laptops the only fix that seems to be laborious but works is to open the Print dialogue. Go to PDF and save your PDF as Postscript and then print that from them. This seems true for all PDF, Excel and Word files. My desktop machines seem to work fine but then they are newer. Printing from a PC there seems to be no issue printing PDFs, Excel or Word documents at the same printer at work.

Saving an RTF and printing would work well for Word documents. I didn't even consider that.

With macOS Monterey released now, I'm curious if Apple addressed this incredibly irritating AirPrint issue. I actually switched to using the HP driver on my Macs, so printing is fine on those machines. Meanwhile, my iPhone and iPad print the dreaded boxed question marks.

I don't really care whether this print issue is the fault of Apple, HP, or Microsoft. It grinds me to know that at least one of them has the solution, and they're just stubbornly sitting on it.

i choose to reinstall printer from using airprint driver to use the printers lokal ipadress instead ..that seemed to solve the issue on a HP printer that had this problem. good luck

From what I can tell, there is a lack of cooperation between Apple and HP to resolve the printing issue. It affects any Microsoft-product print job that goes over AirPrint. This even affects PDFs generated from Microsoft Office products. I suspect it all stems from Microsoft's printing bug from Summer 2021, but I can't prove that. Meanwhile, our Windows PCs print fine.

Notice that your print jobs from Safari and other applications are likely working just fine. Anything from an office product prints the <sarcasm>lovely</sarcasm> boxed question marks. It's unconscionable that HP can send out firmware that renders their expensive printers useless for office and productivity printing.

For what it's worth, I describe a laborious workaround to print from Office applications earlier in this thread (dated Sept 5, 2021). Good luck! And keep your fingers crossed that HP can actually fix their firmware before your expensive printer goes obsolete. I really believe this might be the last HP printer I ever own.

Your earlier response was very helpful. I have found, also, that saving the Word doc in generic .rtf format enables printing from my MacBook without any intermediate steps where previously all I could get was the same gibberish everyone has been experiencing. The .rtf approach may not solve all problems by a long shot, but for emergency printing it works for me.

Switching to Generic Postscript Printer allows me to print, but I have lost the two-sided feature and the ability to choose paper sizes.

Hello , after reading posts and looking on the internet and doing all the suggested steps (which didn't work).

I understand it is a HP Fault and not from Apple. Now the challenges starts with HP.

The fastest solution will be to get previous firmware update back on the HP printer and select auto update OFF.

I dont know how fast HP will fix this issue so to continue printing as you did this would seem the best solution for now.

To get old firmware installed you probably need windows laptop and usb and then downgrade printer by following some steps. You can find info on YouTube. I dont know how to get previous firmware , I think by called HP and asking to send it because they dont want you to use the old firmware.

I understand all frustration because I am also feeling very annoyed that I cannot print a **** paper anymore.

Wishing you all the best