can't print

[sweetah]

can anyone help please? we run a small office with a few macs all on OS 10.2.6 which are networked together and share an epson stylus colour 740 printer. each mac will happily print from any application other than filemaker pro 6.0.v4. when printing from FMP nothing happens and print centre shows no job.

any ideas?

[ernst]

Do you print from the Filemenu, or is it a scripted print?

Ernst.

[sweetah]

i,m trying to print from file menu

[stanley]

Hi Sweetah:

In the File --> Print menu dialog, select "Copies & Pages" and pull down to "FileMaker Pro" and check the settings there. Also, check the Page Setup settings. Otherwise, make sure you've got a record present (i.e., you're not showing "Found: 0".)

Do you see the printer in the print dialog? If you see the printer then the issue should be one of the above areas.

-Stanley

[sweetah]

thanks for your ideas Stanley. yes i can see the printer in the dialogue box and i have checked the other things you suggest and all seems to be in order except it still won't print!!

[stanley]

Now that's just strange. Let's see... I'll take a few more stabs at it.

If you go into Preview mode, do you see data (or anything) on your page?

If you keep the Print Center visible, do you see the job going to the queue at all?

Have you tried to print a script from FMP? If that works, then it's a layout issue. If not, it's something bizarre happening in FMP, interfering with the entire printing process.

-Stanley

[stanley]

Aha!

I just read your original post again, and perhaps this is it.

If the shared printer is on a TCP/IP connection, then try setting FileMaker to TCP/IP networking in Preferences. It defaults to AppleTalk, so maybe that's the fault.

-Stanley

[brianrich]

Have you obtained the latest printer drivers from EPSON http://www.epson.co.uk/support/download/

Although Epson drivers shipped with OSX 10.2, you might find that these work better - install them on all the Macs.

FWIW, I have had no end of trouble with Filemaker 6 and Epson printers on both Mac and PC. Whilst I can usually depend on a page setup/print script correctly orienting the page and printing current or browsed on most printers, it simply doesn't seem to work reliably when you have an Epson printer attached. Still searching for a fix :-(

[Steve T.]

Howdy! I believe Mac OS X has the ability to create PDF's for anything that can be printed although I have never really used X w/inkjets. Can you make a PDF okay? Can you print the PDF?

--ST