My Canon iP7250 will only print blank pages from my MacBook Air (OS X El Capitan). Help!?

To completely confirm that the printer is okay, open Printers & Scanners and select the iP7250 that you created using the Canon driver - not the AirPrint driver. Click on Options & Supplies and select the Utility tab. Then click on Open Printer Utility. This will open the Canon IJ Utility and change the drop menu from Cleaning to Test Print. Click on Nozzle Check. This will print one page showing small boxes for each ink tank. If you see all of them then it confirms the printer is in working order. If one of them is not complete then you can change the drop menu in the Canon utility back to Cleaning and perform a Clean function. If none of the boxes print then it suggests you have a faulty print head - which is separate to the ink tanks - and that would explain why you are getting no black or colour output. In this case you would have to purchase a new print head.

That is good news. The print head isn't cheap.

With all that you have done so far, the next thing I would suggest is a reset of the printing system (if you haven't done that already). The reset removes all printers from Printers & Scanners but not the supporting drivers, so you will just need to add the printer again. Also, it makes changes to some of the core printing system (CUPS) that can help with this sort of symptom.

To reset the printing system, with Printers & Scanners open hover the mouse over the Printers list and right-click (or Control-click if you don't have right-click enabled). A pop-up menu will appear. Select Reset printing system. You will be asked to confirm you selection and then be prompted to enter your admin account and password. With this done, you can restart the Mac and then open Printers & Scanners and add the printer again - choosing the Canon driver over the AirPrint driver at this stage. Now see if you can print.

This is unusual. From Printers & Scanners, select the iP7250 > Options & Supplies > Utility. Click the Print Test Page button. This should print a page from CUPS - the core printing system used in OS X. Does this work?

HWlkr wrote:

Could it be something to do with me printing through Preview?

So is it only Preview you are having the problem with? I read your post as you being unable to print from any application.

If it is just Preview, or more precisely just PDFs, then you can open a PDF in Safari and see if that prints. Right-click on the PDF and select Open With from the pop-up menu and then select Safari. If that works I would then open an image in Preview and see if that prints.

If it's not just Preview that has the problem then I would recommend you open TextEdit, type a couple lines of text and then see if that prints. This will use the large black ink tank in the printer - the smaller one is used for photos.

HWlkr wrote:

Sorry, no, it won't print from anywhere: Safari, Notes, Preview.

Thanks for clarifying.

HWlkr wrote:

I think it must be in my settings somewhere. I can't think what else would cause it.

Agreed. But the reset should have taken care of that. Do you have the Presets menu set to Default Settings?

I would like to check the driver setup. To do that, open System Information (Applications > Utilities) and select Printers in the left column. If the iP7250 is the only printer on the Mac then its information will be shown in the right pane. Copy all of this - or take a screen grab - and paste back here for me to check.

I would also like to check the CUPS error log. Open Printers & Scanners and select the iP7250. Then click on Open Print Queue. In the menubar you will see the Printer menu. Click this and then click Error Log. This will open the Console application with the error log selected. If there is text shown please copy (no more than the last 50 lines) and paste back here.

The utility is called System Information. When you open it you will see Printers in the left column and this will show the information about the printer.

Thanks for that information. The printer information is correct (I could read it fine in the email I got) - no sign of version mismatch which can cause operational issues. And the CUPS error log didn't give me any insight into the symptom.

So at this stage a few things to consider trying.

• Installing another driver package called Gutenprint and creating a printer using the Gutenprint iP7200 driver instead of the Canon driver or Apple's AirPrint driver.
• Creating another user account on the Mac, logging in to that account and then seeing if you can print to the Canon.
• Updating to 10.11.5 to see if that resolves the printing
• Taking the MacBook Air to a store (maybe an Apple Store) where they sell printers to see if you can print.