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Wesley JohnsonFlag for United States of America

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Printing 11x17 on HP CP5225n Printers

This is a tough one. I’ve spent a couple hours on it and others have also put time in. A call to HP yielded no positive results.

A tech from HP came in a few weeks ago to install a new side on our HP CP5225 printer;  everything he did was hardware-focused, but, in troubleshooting, he reset to factory defaults. Almost immediately after it was put back in, a report came across my desk that 11x17 prints were always coming out as 8.5x11. All the settings looked OK; I checked the printer, the print driver (Universal Print, PCL6) & software being used (MS Publisher, which I know is not a good choice). I tried printing the same document on multiple computers through that printer and got the same result. Other documents did the same thing.

I tried uninstalling & reinstalling MS Office. No luck. I tried saving one of the affected documents as a PDF and printing it. Same result. The only way around this that I could find was to cut & paste the items from one of the old Publisher documents into a new one or resaving it. Now that isn’t even working.

I spoke with HP on the phone about this and resaving was the only fix that they could offer. They said it was possible that my documents have gotten “corrupted,” which, to me, sounds like a bunk excuse. This is happening with new documents, too.

This has been VERY frustrating. Points are there for the taking if anyone can help, also a virtual high five.
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Wesley Johnson
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Update: Installed new Firmware. Tried to print using the flip-out Tray 1. I made a new document and cut and pasted "11x17 landscape" into it repeatedly. This printed correctly. I then tried to cut & paste one of the bad documents into the one I created after I deleted the text. Printed out as 8.5x11 portrait on 11x17 paper. Something I did in this process did make the PDF work, though. Printing that out yielded positive results.
This might not be an answer, but for me, it helps with the troubleshooting process.

See if the problem still exists with another program, like Word or Excel. Try a non-Microsoft program.

If it does not work right with any program, then we know it's not the software.

Next: Make sure that the system (Printer) shows it has 11X17 installed and ready. Here I am at a disadvantage as I can't see your printer, but the drawer of the printer should specifically be an 11X17 drawer holding that paper.

Next: Is there a screen of some kind on the printer that shows drawer assignments that need to be adjusted; IE: if there is the right size in there, but the machine is telling the system that it is something else.

Next: If there is a server involved that is hosting it: what is set there for the defaults?

Finally: The local user drivers. Step by step look at the settings and make sure that everything is set at 11X17 that needs to be.
RKoons - The only other program I tried was Adobe Reader after saving the document I was testing with in Publisher as a PDF. It was doing the same thing at first but now seems to be working. The only thing I did between it being bad & then good is installing the printer's firmware. Publisher still didn't work correctly afterward.

The printer has 11x17 paper installed and the tray settings have been checked. I've ensured that the guides are in the proper position; if they're not, I know printers can get confused. We've looked at the on-printer settings for paper size too.

We use the universal PCL6 driver and have checked those settings as well.

Currently when we attempt to print an 11x17 document via Publisher in Landscape, the

Without doing anything to the settings, as mentioned in my update, I created a whole new 11x17 document with text pasted repeatedly. It printed without error. When I cut & pasted the old document into it, it messed up again. PDFs work at the moment.
There is always that chance that the file could be corrupt in some way. I don't claim to understand how that works but I know it happens.

Another thing would be to try another printer with that same file, and then try that printer with another Publisher file.

In addition, sometimes printers / Programs have a problem between 11X17 & Tabloid; try both.

The fact that you could get SOMETHING to come out on 11X17 shows that the printer can do it, and that somehow, the printer is getting the wrong message from the program or the file.
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Wesley Johnson
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RKoons - I am IT and have already started the process. Thanks.
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