Fortunately I don’t often need to use a printerĪnd my neighbour has kindly printed a few pages for me from time to time. This printer doesn’t work and hasn’t worked ever since I got it last June. Yes, that’s what I did with the help of tech support, following their instructions to the letter.

You’ll do that from the panel on the printer”. “Be sure you’re telling it that you are using USB and not WiFi or wired LAN. Canon helped me set it up for a usb connection. “Your printer can connect directly to your Mac via USB as you’re looking to do”: theoretically, yes. And I’ve been through the disconnect-reconnect routine several times with them. But the cable I do have has worked about 6 or 7 times, when tech support have guided me on the phone, although this hasn’t worked recently. “I’d try another cable”: I don’t have one. Yes, I’ve tried that several times with Canon tech support.It doesn’t work: System Preferences just says “no printer is available”. You say “If it were me: I’d disconnect the USB cable from both ends and then reconnect it”. Control-click in the list of printers (outlined in red below).Go to the Print & Scan preference pane ( Apple menu/System Preferences).The thing to do next is to “reset the printing system.” That gives you a fresh start, and in my experience, resetting the printing system ALWAYS solves the problem, allowing the printer software to be downloaded successfully from Apple. Never, that is, unless you know what to do next. Usually the failure happens when getting the software from Apple: everything seems to be proceeding apace when all of a sudden, during the download, a message pops up saying something about the software not being available, and to “Please try again later.” Try later all you want, but once you see that message it is NEVER going to work. Let Apple deliver the software over the internet (totally automatically).Click the “+” at bottom left of the Print & Scan preference pane.Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu, then click on Print & Scan.Connect printer to Mac with USB cable (or wirelessly).Apple long ago tired of waiting for printer manufacturers to provide software compatible with each new version of OS X, so they started doing it themselves, and on the whole this has been a good thing for Mac users. Rather, the instructions say, get the software from Apple, and indeed that is excellent advice. Many printers from Epson, Canon and Hewlett-Packard come with instructions to NOT install the software that comes with them on CDs.

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