Steve ODonnell

Q: Fixing when certain applications won't print

I've recently noticed that Safari, Preview, and a couple other applications couldn't print. When I tried, the print dialog wouldn't show a thumbnail preview (it wasn't blank, it just wasn't there) and printing would cause the printer to spit out a blank page. Other applications worked normally. I could even take a pdf that wouldn't print from Preview, put it in Pages and then print it.

 

The printer log had entries for "Unable to add document to print job."

 

It sounded like a permissions problem, but repairing those and restarting didn't do anything.

 

Finally I went to System Preferences/Printers and Scanners, right clicked on the printer and chose Reset printing system. Then I re-added my printer and now everything is working as it should.

 

There's no question, I just wanted to put this someplace where someone else would find it if they have the same problem.

2.4 GHz iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 7, 2016 7:07 AM