"Waiting for printer connection" when exporting

[Indigo744]

Hello!

I hope this message finds you well 😄

Lately, I have been having a weird message popping up when exporting my application:

In French, it says "Waiting for printer connection, or cancel the connection".

After investigating doing a step by step debugging, I found out that the issue come from this line in clsDevMode

    ' Attempt to load the printer object
    Set objPrinter = GetPrinterByName(strPrinter)

Namely, looping through all Application.Printers triggers this popup : GetPrinterByName()

It searches for the "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer, but the popup is coming from another one. This is happening because I have a Brother Laser printer that is offline most of the time.

Now, I know this is specific to my setup, I could simply remove this printer, or start it before I export. But this is not very user friendly, especially when I want to print with this printer...

I wonder if it would be possible to get the printer settings without looping through all printers?

In the doc, it seems we could directly get the printer by its name without looping: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/access.printer

If I can find a bit more time, I will try this.

Thank you and have a nice day!

[joyfullservice]

Hi @Indigo744, nice to hear from you! Thanks for pointing out the issue with looping through the printers. We definitely don't want the process hanging if a printer is unavailable, especially if the printer is not needed for the operation. It sounds like it may be better to just attempt to access the printer by name, then handle the error if the printer does not exist.

[joyfullservice]

Let me know if that fixes it!

FYI, there are some other significant changes in the dev branch, if you haven't updated your version recently... In particular, you may notice a lot of changed* files when forms are exported, due to the standardizing of form coordinate values.

[Indigo744]

@joyfullservice that was fast, thank you 😸

However, sadly, the issue remains... Even though it searches directly for Microsoft Print to PDF.

Accessing any item (either using the name or the index) in the Printers collection triggers this popup.
(I should have try this sooner)

One thing to note is, if I cancel the first popup, the popup does not come back for any subsequent access to the Printers collection, unless I access the one offline.

I would guess that, on first collection access, MS Access build the collection and it triggers the popup.

It seems there is no easy way out of this issue 🥲

[Indigo744]

I manage to actually resolve this issue thanks to this comment in this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/18c9vj4/comment/mg3syma/

Indeed, the offending printer has its driver set to Microsoft IPP Class Driver:

PS > get-printer
Name                           ComputerName    Type         DriverName                PortName        Shared   Published  DeviceType
----                           ------------    ----         ----------                --------        ------   ---------  ----------
Brother DCP-L3520CDW series                    Local        Microsoft IPP Class Dr... WSD-fc14946b... False    False      Print
Microsoft Print to PDF                         Local        Microsoft Print To PDF    PORTPROMPT:     False    False      Print

I went to download the drivers from the Brother website, then I selected the correct driver (notice how the dialog also changed):

PS > get-printer
Name                           ComputerName    Type         DriverName                PortName        Shared   Published  DeviceType
----                           ------------    ----         ----------                --------        ------   ---------  ----------
Brother DCP-L3520CDW series                    Local        Brother DCP-L3520CDW s... WSD-fc14946b... False    False      Print
Microsoft Print to PDF                         Local        Microsoft Print To PDF    PORTPROMPT:     False    False      Print

And now, I don't have any "Waiting for connection" popup when accessing the Printers collection!

This is kind of crazy I guess, but it works.

I'm not sure we need to do anything about it in the addin. This issue could still serve someone coming here for a solution 😸

Thanks you again @joyfullservice, sorry to have wasted your time on this!

[techvslife]

I have the same issue across the board with Brother, but could you say exactly the steps you took to switch it out of IPP? I use Windows 11 protected mode printing, so I’m not sure how to do it. Thanks.

[Indigo744]

I'm not sure what is Windows 11 protected mode printing, but here are the exact steps:

1. Go to Settings, Printers and scanners, then find your Brother printer.

2. In the printer page, click on Printer Properties
   

3. A popup should open
   

4. Find the Advanced tab, and you have access to the driver selector:
   

Hope this helps!

[techvslife]

Thank you, unfortunately the Brother specific driver in that dropdown is not available in the new Windows protected-mode printing (WPP). (Microsoft is shifting to a driverless printing model, for security and stability, as the printing is taken out of the lower level system or kernel mode to userland - ironically it creates bugs here.) My only relevant choices there (I mean apart from print to pdf etc) are the IPP driver and the Universal Driver:

https://www.papercut.com/discover/the-complete-guide-to-windows-protected-print-wpp/

[Indigo744]

Ah, now that you say that, I recall that on one of my machine, I couldn't find the driver on the list and had to manually add the driver! I don't know why or the difference between the machines, but I suspect it's because I did not installed the "full package" on one.

In any case, I had to download the driver from Brother website for my printer, install it, then click on the "New Driver" on the right.

1. Go to https://support.brother.com/g/b/countrytop.aspx?c=as_ot&lang=en
2. Find the printer (mine is DCP-L3520CDW, hence the page is https://support.brother.com/g/b/producttop.aspx?c=as_ot&lang=en&prod=dcpl3520cdw_eu_as)
3. Click on Download
4. Fill the information (win 11 x64)
5. Find the printer driver:
   
6. Download and extract it
7. It should extract in a gdi folder next to the installer
   
8. Now go back to the Printer Properties, and click on New Driver
9. If you don't find the driver, click on Have Disk on bottom right
10. Select Browse
11. Navigate to the gdi folder and select one of the INF file (driver file)
12. You should be able to select the driver for your printer
13. If not, go back to select another INF file!

Hope this helps!

[Indigo744]

Yours seems to be MFC-L9670CDN, then the product page is:
https://support.brother.com/g/b/producttop.aspx?c=as_ot&lang=en&prod=mfcl9670cdn_all
Direct link to download the printer drivers: https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadhowto.aspx?c=as_ot&lang=en&prod=mfcl9670cdn_all&os=10068&dlid=dlf106971_000&flang=4&type3=408

[techvslife]

Thank you, but that won’t work because it’s the new protected print mode. I had the Brother driver installed but upon activating windows protected mode printing, it was deactivated. Windows protected mode operates only with IPP:

https://www.papercut.com/discover/the-complete-guide-to-windows-protected-print-wpp/

However the step by step guide is very helpful to post, as most people are still using the older Windows model (and I think will be for some time).

[techvslife]

As a workaround for those who are using Windows protected printing (WPP) mode:

1. Turn off "Let Windows manage my default printer." (under Settings, "Bluetooth & Devices", "Printers & Scanners").
2. Select "Microsoft Print to PDF" (or similar) as your default printer.

(The drawback is that you'd have to select the Brother printer as the destination in the print dialog every time you print.)