I have a wide-format printer with multiple paper trays.
When I print from any LO application:
Q1. How do I select the paper tray without a physical trip to the printer console?
Q2. How do I print “a letter” (tray 1) and “an envelope” (tray 2)?
Q3. How to I print the Q2 job when it is mail-merge multiple letter-envelope pairs?
Q4. How to Format-Page so that CALC prints onto a “tabloid” page and asks for a tray change?
Thank you in Advance,
On my Brother MFC-J6955DW and the previous iteration of it, if I set the paper size for each tray in the printer when I load it, and the printer driver is set to auto select the tray, then I can print an envelope and letter in the same print job and the printer deals with it
What does the printer manual for your unknown printer say?
Otherwise, click the button next to the printer in the print dialogue and that will take you to the printer driver dialogue where you should be able to specify the paper tray. You could also do the same from File - Printer settings
BTW with printer problems you should always specify the actual model of printer and connection type as well as the usual details of operating system and LibreOffice version (copy from the About LibreOffice dialogue)
Colleague EarnestAI,
You are the second person to mention setting AUTO_TRAY_SELECT. Now to start searching for that detail in my HPLIP and Linux Mint packages.
The printer is an HP OfficeJet 7740 Wide Format All-in-One. I named the printer when I posted at the Mint forums, but (blushing) did not do so at the LibreOffice forum. Sorry!
Thanks for the Reply,
---I can’t help with Linux as my Linux box died and I haven’t replaced it yet.
Was this your post, https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=2805fea107d8dc423aa193cb3ebc9136&p=6489716#post6489716 ?
Printing and printing options are not so easy, as part of the options are handled by LO, and the other part of the options are handled by the operating system.
In an odt, right clicking / Page Style / Page shows Paper Tray options. Do you see some options there, or just the standard [From Printer Settings] menu entry?
Thank you again…
When I open Page Styles, the paper tray option has only one selection: “from Printer Settings” Thank you for pointing out this option.
Is there a way that LO will let me have a default printer that might be different from the system-wide default printer.
One routinely sets global formatting and styles long before a printer gets selected. Paper Tray configuration would not be available until a printer gets selected.
Cordially,
I cannot help too much here, as I am on a Windows box, and I just have pdf and fax printers, none with different trays.
Please check yourself:
If you select a printer under File / Printer settings, leave LO, restart LO, is there still the same printer selected?
If you select a printer with more than one tray, do you still see only the default tray entry under Page Styles?
I seem to recall that this has been broken for quite a long time, or rather, it was considered won’t fix, on the premise that no one needed it anymore.
There is /was at least one bug report about it, but it may have been in the old bug reporting system, or alternatively, in the OpenOffice.org bug reporting system.
LibreOffice respects system settings so the default is the default printer.
You can choose a different printer on a per file basis by setting the printer (and other print settings) in File - Print settings. After saving the document, the settings will be saved too.
For a bit of history, it was supposed to have been fixed in tdf#43932, i.e. back in version 3.6, or thereabouts.
See also tdf#67463 (relating to 4.0.4, where it was broken again).
Check this thread for a macro to test printing output to multiple different trays based on page styles:
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56757
If it is no longer working at all, then it has probably been broken again, and that would require filing a new bug report.
I would hazard a guess that while the OP believes his printer is using HPLIP, it might be that this statement from https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2315922&hilit=select+printer+tray#p2315922 applies:
Note that “sane-airscan” and “ipp-usb” should NOT be installed on your system: as mentioned in Linux Mint user manual, the presence of “sane-airscan” and “ipp-usb” prevents the use of drivers, even when drivers are installed.
I guess that IPP provides basic drivers but without extras like tray selection, etc., exactly the same as it does in Windows.
Q1. What is the data that tells the printer to select a paper tray as a setup for a print job? If I knew this, I could script “set tray #1” vs. “set tray #2” ahead of my jobs.
Q2. Is the tray setting process different when I send data from a CLI vs, from a browser, LibreOffice, or other application?
Q3. Since most Linux printing uses CUPS, how do you suggest that I discover if that is the culprit instead of HPLIP?
The HP 7740 has two paper trays. Tray #1 (upper) has fetures for all sorts of paper formats – letter, legal, tabloid, envelopes, index cards, etc. Tray #2 (lower) is only able to handle sheet goods – letter, legal, tabloid, etc.
When you open a tray and then close it, the printer console prompts so that you can modify the paper installed in the tray. (It does not care if you closed to tray without altering what is installed.)
There is a console setting to select the “Default Paper Tray”. This default gets used when there are no instructions in the print job to request a specific paper tray.
Thank you in advance,