Apps trying to open printer connection unnecessarily

Question

Apps trying to open printer connection unnecessarily

Anonymous

I've noticed for some time now that a PC app will show this:

when I have no intention of printing. The latest example is MS Publisher which raises this when I have selected an existing or new (blank) file. No big deal, but I can't see why it should happen. I assume it's something introduced by one of the fairly recent Windows updates.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author

DaveM121 929.6K Independent Advisor

Hi, I am Dave, I will help you with this.

Some apps, especially the Office apps load the printer settings on start-up, so they can get the avaialble page sizes... etc. on your printer. if that popup is appearing regularly, it may be best to uninstall your printer, restart your PC, then go to the support page for your printer on the manufacturers website to download and re-install the version of printer drivers, firmware and associated software they provide for your printer.

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1 additional answer

Answer 1

Dave has the correct answer for you; let me just toss in a bit more info.

Pretty much any application that needs to scale your work to fit your printed pages needs to contact the printer (or rather the printer driver) to learn the available page sizes, printable area (most printers can't print clear out to the edges of the page) and a few other bits of info.

PowerPoint has always been fussy about having a printer driver installed, and it may be unhappy to find that the current printer is an oddball device like a label printer or the like.

If you don't have a physical printer installed, go into Control Panel | Devices and Printers and set one of the MS-supplied drivers (the XPS driver or PDF driver) as your default printer. That should be enough to keep PPT happy.

That'd be for Windows, by the way. If you're on Mac, please mention that (and when asking questions in the future, don't leave it set to Unknown as is the case here).