What is difference between pausing a printer and using it offline, especially in regards to network printing?

Question

My printer is a HP 2605dn laser printer, which is on my home network (using IPP to the printer's IP address on port 9100). When I am away from home, I like to send print jobs to the offline printer for actual printing when I return. To do this, I pause the printer when I'm away, and I resume it when I am back at home. However, the printer is automatically "offline" when I am away. What are the differences between a printer that is "paused" and one that is "offline"? If I print to an offline printer, will the jobs automatically start once the printer becomes online (when I reconnect to my home network)?

Answer 1

Hi Irv,

Welcome to Microsoft Answers!

In a ‘Paused’ printer the spooler is still working so it will accept the printing jobs and store it in its memory until the printing job is resumed. But if the printer is ‘Offline’ the spooler will have no jobs assigned to it, so there will be no printing jobs in the spooler memory when you put it online.

This means that if you assign any printing job to the printer when it is offline, it will not start the job automatically once you reconnect to the home network.

Hope this information is helpful.

Amrita M

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.