AirPrint issues? (and workaround solution)

[sjleworthy]

Hi guys

I recently purchased a brand new HP AirPrint compatible printer. I can now print documents straight from my iPad to my printer. Nice.
But.......

There seems to be limitations in my printing, in whatever app I use as well. As in the iPad/printer has difficulties in printing more than a single page at once.
I'm specifically talking email for instance. If I get a long scrolling email and AirPrint it, only one page of paper prints out. Most frustrating.
Same goes for my letters and documents; try to print out a document with more than a single page then it falls over.
Same with trying to print web pages - the printer struggles where the web page is large or in multiple pages.

Ive done a fair bit of testing and it looks like this is more a general iPad AirPrint limitation rather than a printer issue. More like an iOS limitation.
Has anyone else noticed this?

I have found a decent solution though - turn whatever I want to print into a PDF first. Be it a letter, web page, picture, email etc etc. Air print seams to perfectly print individual A4 page PDF files. This is pain in the ass as i'd like to print directly from the app I'm in, but all is not plain sailing.

am I missing a trick here? Is this a common problem already noted? Is there a universal printing app that'll help solve these issues, as the general AirPrint facility doesn't have printer/iPad set-ups or configurations. It just prints.

Thanks guys, any advice or insight would be useful.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

OK - I don't have an AirPrint printer, but I do use FingerPrint, which makes my PC 'behave' like an AirPrint printer - in other words, when I try to print from an iPad App that supports in-app printing, such as Pages, my PC printers appear as choices in the iPad's print menu. Using FingerPrint, I have no such problems. I get the choice of what pages I want to print and how many copies I want and it works just fine.

You can try FingerPrint free for 7 days, so I wonder if it's worth you trying it and seeing if the problem persists.?

Tim

 

[thewitt]

I have no issues printing to my HP AirPrint printer either.

-t

 

[sjleworthy]

OK - I don't have an AirPrint printer, but I do use FingerPrint, which makes my PC 'behave' like an AirPrint printer - in other words, when I try to print from an iPad App that supports in-app printing, such as Pages, my PC printers appear as choices in the iPad's print menu. Using FingerPrint, I have no such problems. I get the choice of what pages I want to print and how many copies I want and it works just fine.

You can try FingerPrint free for 7 days, so I wonder if it's worth you trying it and seeing if the problem persists.?

Tim

Hi Tim

Can you give me a link or dev info on this fingerprint app please? Only typing fingerprint into the app store brings up 100's of apps all about finger printing and finger scanning.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Ah - that's because FingerPrint is an app that runs on your PC not on the iPad. When you use FingerPrint there's no app needed for your iPad because FingerPrint makes the PC look exactly like an AirPrint printer...

Have a look here..

Collobos Software

Tim

 

[sjleworthy]

Ah. Gotcha. Trouble is, I don't have any printers connected to my pc yet (haven't bought the cable to connect up).

So.......

1) are the any iPad apps I can use that are alternatives to the inbuilt AirPrint software?
2) can you suggest how I can wirelessly print from my pc to my HP AirPrint enabled wireless printer?


Thanks

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

PrintCentral.....but, no in-app printing. Apple forced the Developer to remove that capability because it used an undocumented API. So you have to move the document to PrintCentral and then print from there....so, not much better than your PDF solution.

Tim

 

[TheRambler]

There's a great app in Cydia called truprint, that looks a good one and also try googling print n share. That last one deffo works with wireless.

 

[sjleworthy]

Thanks fellers, something to play with

 

[sjleworthy]

It,s also just occurred to me too - my printer prints backwards first, ie, if my document is long or a couple of pages it,ll print from the bottom up, ie, the last page first, then it makes it's way to the beginning of the document, which prints out last.

This is fine

Here's another Q.......

I need to print out a graphical booking confirmation sent to me via email. The email is longer than a single A4 page though, meaning, as with most emails, there is no natural A4 page breaks, meaning my printer naturally prints out the whole lot.
This means some of my printed receipts get 'split' into separate pages whilst printing.

I can work around this if I have to by cutting and pasting and making jpg files for separate printing, but this is a faff i'd prefer not to go through.

1) Is there a way I can get the standard iPad email client to acknowledge separate page breaks within an email to make it print better and more tidily?

2) Can I make emails into pdf's somehow?

3) is there another emial client or something like good reader that'll handle my long emails better than the standard client?

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Emails into PDFs....hmmm...OK, cut and paste to Pages and then you can email it to yourself as a PDF - OK, not a good solution, back to the drawing board, Tim...

Tim

 

[sjleworthy]

Kinda like I suspected. There are plenty of work arounds if you're prepared to do the leg work, but I no wants to do that.

I'll email Apple my concerns to see if future email app additions can be improved.

I know Office2HD (which is my major tool of choice for most things) is in for a serious overhaul as we speak and will be soon released. This will help.

Thanks fellers

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Let us know how it works out...

Tim

 

[sjleworthy]

thanks guys. upshot is -

printing works fine. it's just works from the last page up, which is what confused me somewhat. (you always expect to see page 1 printed first).

but, and this has always been an issue, its still a pain in the ass printing long emails out when on the ipad they aren't split up and recognised as individual pages like desk top clients.

i cant see this changing until the ios changes, if it does. this isnt really an issue though. solution - just dont print the emails. theres generally a lot of crap in emails anyway which is never needed, so, as Tim says, cutting and pasting the essential info from them into separate A4 sized pages somewhere else and printing those out is the best option so far.

 

[morsberger5]

I want to print only one single page on my HP air print - how can I do that? there are no printing options to choose.