No SCAN button shows on printer driver window

Question

No SCAN button shows on printer driver window

Hi -

This is a rewrite for clarity of a question I submitted on 1-15-16. First, I am running El Capitan (10.11.2) on a MBPro Retina with 8 GB RAM.

As a result of having repeatedly reset the printing system and re-installing (various versions of) the driver for my HP Officejet Pro 8500a Plus printer to solve a connectivity issue, the printer window under System Preferences now shows the printer without the SCAN option and, no matter what I try, I can't get it back. It treats this multi-function printer as a printer-only. I used to be able to SCAN from my desktop. Printing features work fine.

Been to the HP support site and Apple's as well and tried everything suggested, but can't get SCAN back. I discovered from the HP site that there is no full-feature driver from HP for this printer on the Mac and that the driver that provides full functionality is supplied by Apple. However, even after the recent V3.1 HP update from Apple, there is no scanning.

Any ideas?

Thanks

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3), null

Posted on Jan 19, 2016 6:44 AM

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Answer 1

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Jan 19, 2016 3:25 PM in response to davidfromspencer

To get the Scan button in Printers & Scanners the device needs to have a supporting ICA driver. So it would appear that there is no ICA driver for your model. Checking the Apple Printer and Scanner Driver List there are a few models of HP8500 showing a scan driver is available. Is your model one of these that show a Scan driver is available?

Also, if you open System Information (Applications > Utilities) you will see a Printers entry down the left sidebar. When you select this you will see information about your printer in the right pane. Or if you have more than one printer on this Mac, select the model in the top right pane to see its information in the bottom right pane. As per the image below, if the printer supports scanning there will be a Yes entry next to the scanning support field.

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Answer 2

Jan 21, 2016 6:10 AM in response to davidfromspencer

I tried something new: I reset the printing system, then connected the printer directly to my Mac using a USB cable. The Mac immediately installed the correct driver WITH the SCAN tab intact in the Printers & Scanners Window. However, if I install the driver using the printer's wireless IP address, I DON'T get the SCAN tab.

Is there a solution to this problem, such as a way to change the source of the printer (from USB to WIFI) without re-installing the printer under WIFI (where it loses its SCAN abilities)?

PS - Please remember that SCAN used to work under WIFI.

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Answer 3

Jan 19, 2016 5:44 PM in response to PAHU

Hi - Thanks for your response. I probably wasn't clear about one factor: scanning did work until this recent problem, so I must have had a scanning-capable driver installed until recently. The whole problem started when I tried to fix a recent, persistent problem where both of my Macs would claim that they couldn't connect to the printer whenever I submitted a print request. The printer's front panel would show it connected wirelessly to my network with 4 bars of signal strength. If I re-configured the printer's wireless connection (to the same settings it already had) and re-connected it, then printing would work again, but not for more than an hour or two.

Because of the persistence of this problem, I finally started resetting the print system and re-installing drivers.

In the middle of trying to solve this problem, I got an update notice from Apple with HP drivers version 3.1. I posted the update and printing worked more reliably, but SCAN had vanished. Since then, I have tried resetting the printing system multiple times and have tried installing drivers from HP. Nothing seems to help. Printing is fine, but scanning is nonexistent.

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