Frequently Asked Questions

Printing Problems

Blank (or almost blank) Pages.

There are many possible causes for this problem. Although the extra pages are not due to any flaw in the Net-Print service, you can get a refund for these pages.

With some Web pages, Netscape will either refuse to print at all, or it will produce output which is missing large sections of the page. This annoying behavior can often be solved by clicking on the frame which you want to print before clicking on the Print button.

Some course web sites, when printed from a Macintosh using Netscape, cause an extra page with only a Netscape header and/or footer to be printed for each page of the original document. The Macintosh calculates that the document is too wide to fit on one page and attempts to print the remainder of each page on another sheet.

Printing Web pages using Windows Netscape can also result in problems. Some Web sites compensate for this by having special instructions for printing. Please look for and follow these instructions!

Another candidate for multiple blank pages is Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Something that might cause this is a high numbered cell getting inadvertantly marked, causing all the pages between it and the top to be printed. The current record for blank Excel spreadsheets is 420 pages!

Our recommendations are:

Follow any special printing instructions which appear on the Web site.
In Netscape, click on the frame which you want to print before clicking on the Print button.
When printing PDF documents in Internet Explorer, use the Acrobat Reader print button rather than the Internet Explorer print button.
Macintosh Netscape has a Scale option on the Page Attributes section of Page Setup in the File menu to fix the oversized image or table problem.
Windows Netscape will truncate oversized images and tables. It has a Scaling option on the Graphics tab of the Properties dialog box.
Internet Explorer will sometimes print properly when Netscape won't.
Most browsers and other applications have a Print Preview function. It is your friend! Use it!

If you believe that your blank output is due to some other cause, please tell us about it using the Net-Print feedback link.

Printing PDF files.

Blank pages

When printing PDF documents in Internet Explorer, use the Acrobat Reader print button rather than the Internet Explorer print button.

PostScript errors

Short answer: Try setting Print as image in the printer dialog box. Unfortunately, this will cause printing to be much slower.

Long explanation: PDF files may generate printing errors on some or all pages, or not print at all. This is a complex problem due to the large variety of PDF file content, various versions of Adobe Distiller, varieties of printer drivers, multitudes of printer driver option settings and the way defaults are handled by various operating systems, and various versions of PostScript interpreters in printers of varying manufacturer, model, and age. This shouldn't be your problem, but that's life in the computing age. Net-Print usually gives refunds even though it's not Net-Print's fault.

Printing Microsoft Word documents.

Under certain circumstances - notably printing a document sent as an email attachment - Microsoft Word will send a print job to the printer which results in the wheels turning, but no output. Saving the document as Word 6.0/95 (using a different name to preserve the original) and reading it back in may fix the problem.

Printing selected pages of a Microsoft Word document.

Microsoft Word documents sometimes get corrupted. Sometimes your document will look fine in "Print Preview", but pages will come out of the printer with incorrect contents.

We have found that the following procedure sometimes fixes the problem:

Use Select All and Copy to copy your entire document to the clipboard.
Select New from the File menu and create a new blank document.
Paste your document into the blank document.
Try printing again.

Printing Web text pasted into a Microsoft Word document.

Try changing fonts in the Word document which have names like "Ariel Unicode" to the same font without the "Unicode".

I printed a single page document from Photoshop or Pagemaker and ended up with 103 pages of jibberish.

This problem is often due to these applications being set to use Binary PostScript. Use ASCII encoding instead. In MacOS X Photoshop, for example:

Pick Print with Preview... from the File menu.
Set Encoding to ASCII.
Click Done.

Feel free to request a refund!

The printer I printed to is not working.

You can cancel your print job, or move it to another printer queue.

Go to the Printer Status Information Web page.
Select the Printer Name link for the printer you sent your print job to.
Check the box(es) next to the print job(s) you want to cancel or move.
Click the Cancel Job button, or select a printer to move your print job to and click the Move Job button.

Printing seemed to work normally, but I can't find my printout.

First, view the status of all Net-Print printers. Then click on the printer to which you sent your job. You will see the list of jobs that are waiting to print.

If your print job is still there and your Net ID appears in the Net ID column, you can wait for your job to print, move it to another printer, or cancel it.

If the Net ID column for your job says ERROR, you may have an authentication error. You will get a header sheet describing the error (printed at no charge), and an e-mail message. Your job will not be printed.

For other types of errors, ask the lab operator to remove your job from the queue. (If you are working in an unstaffed lab or from your own computer, call a staffed lab.) Then try printing again.

Second, check the printer to see whether it is displaying any error messages. If it is, notify the lab operator. If the problem might take some time to resolve, you may want to move your print job to a different printer.

Third, make sure SideCar is running.

Fourth, check the printing software on your workstation.

Windows: Click Start -> Settings -> Printers, then double-click the printer to which you are printing. If your document is in the list, make sure that Pause is not selected.

Macintosh: Double-click the Desktop Printer icon for the printer to which you are printing. If your document is in the list, make sure that Stop Print Queue is not selected.

Fifth, try restarting the computer.

If you are using your own computer, try restarting the computer. If that doesn't solve the problem, reinstallSideCar and/or the printer configuration.

If you are working in a CIT Computer Lab on a Windows computer, choose Logout from the Start menu. SideCar will automatically be reinstalled.

If you are working in an CIT Computer Lab on a Macintosh, go to the Finder and choose Restart from the Special menu. SideCar will automatically be reinstalled.

Why does Net-Print waste an entire sheet of paper for every print job?

That sheet of paper is Net-Print's "header page" option for identifying your printout. It's printed free of charge. To save paper, you can choose the "watermark" option instead, which prints the identifying information at the top of the first page of your printout. It looks like the top of a fax page. Example of Net-Print's watermark:

To use the watermark option, go to the Accounts page, and in the Header Page box, click the button next to "no header page, watermark with NetID on first page of your printout."

You have to choose either the watermark or header page option because Net-Print needs some way to separate one print job from another, so that each job can be properly filed if its owner is not there to pick it up as soon as it's printed. It also keeps people from getting their printouts mixed up with someone else's. In the past, the only way Net-Print could do this was to print a free, separate divider sheet.

How can I avoid having the first page of my output marked by the print job information at the top?

What you are seeing is Net-Print's watermark option for identifying your printout. To remove it, you will need to print your job using the separate "header page" option instead.

On the Accounts page, in the Header Page box, click the button next to "header page with NetID only" or the button next to "header page with NetID and account information." Either option will print the job information on a separate sheet of paper. Your account is not charged for this header page.

Please remember that the use of the watermark option instead of header pages saves about a half million pieces of paper per year. We don't think that any Cornell instructors will mind having the watermark on the first page of your papers. If any do, please let us know via email to Net-Print feedback.

Will we ever have color printers?

There are color printers located in Uris Library Lab, Upson Lab, Noyes Lab, Robert Purcell Lab, and Tjaden Lab. There are also color printers in several non-CIT labs on Campus. See the Printer Features page for details.

My Mac appears to be printing, but no output comes out

Possible solutions:

Delete the desktop printer, restart the computer and then re-select and setup the printer.
Delete the spool folder.
Zap the PRAM (during startup hold down the apple->option->P and R keys, through 3 cycles of the startup chimes).

Some special characters didn't print correctly even though they appeared correct in "Print Preview"

Some of the characters in some workstation fonts (eg. "Times") are not implemented in the printers' version of the font. Try switching to a different font (eg. "Times New Roman").

How do I print a PostScript file?

To print PostScript files from a Windows workstation, you should have GSview installed. If the PostScript is coming from a Web page link, Netscape should invoke GSview automatically. If the PostScript is coming from a file on your workstation, you will have to run GSview on it manually.

Once you have opened the PostScript data in GSview, select Print... from the File menu, check the PostScript Printer box, select the proper Queue and the Pages you want to print, and click OK.

Rates and Accounts

Why do you charge the same for duplex (two sided) printing as for simplex (one sided) printing?

Duplex printing reduces our cost of printing by an amount (about 1/3 cent per page) which is insignificant, especially when the added costs of purchasing and maintaining duplex-capable printers are considered.

I duplex printed (two sided) N pages and was charged for N+1 pages

Duplex printing is new to Net-Print. The only printers which are currently capable of counting duplexed pages accurately are newer Xerox Phaser models. Other printers will round up a print job's pagecount to an even number of pages. Additionally, some applications (eg. Microsoft Internet Explorer) have been found to append an extra blank page when duplex printing a document with an odd number of pages. We consider pagecount errors due to these printer and application flaws to be unavoidable and therefore not eligible for refunds.

Why do you charge so much per page?

The Net-Print service is a "university service center," which means that it must recover all of its costs. It is not subsidized by Cornell University. The costs consist of printers, printer supplies and maintenance, servers, development and marketing staff, and overhead. In order for Net-Print to be reliable, we have to use quality printers, reliable servers, and competent staff.

The good news is that the server, staff, and overhead costs are relatively stable, and the printer costs are nearly proportional to the number of printers. As the volume of printing increases, it should be possible to recover costs while improving service or lowering page charges.

Note that Net-Print makes it possible for departments to create course accounts for their students. To do this, the professor submits a list of the class's Net IDs and money allocations to the Net-Print staff. The students can then select this course account as their designated account on the Accounts page, and print against their allocations. At the end of the semester, the department is billed for the used portions of the allocations. If any of your courses seem to require a large amount of printing, you might ask your instructors to consider establishing Net-Print course accounts.

Net-Print claims that my Bursar account is canceled.

Short answer: Go to the Net-Print "signup" page and attempt to sign up again. If it works, your Net-Print Bursar account will no longer be canceled. If not, then you may have lost your Bursar billing eligibility and should keep reading.

Longer answer: Net-Print checks daily with the University Bursar's office's database to determine whether Net-Print subscribers with Bursar accounts are "eligible for billing". If, for one of a variety of possible reasons, a student has become ineligible, Net-Print marks their account as "canceled". If you followed the instructions above and were told that you are not eligible, you should contact the Bursar's office at 607-255-2336. After your eligibility problem is resolved, you can restore your Net-Print Bursar account by following the procedure above (but see below).

There is one additional potential problem. Since the eligibility database to which Net-Print has access is updated only once per day (at about 3AM), you will not be able to re-signup with Net-Print until the day after you resolve your eligibility problem. In the meantime, you can restore your ability to print by obtaining a Net-Print cash account at the CIT HelpDesk.

I thought I was printing on my course account, but the charges ended up on my Bursar bill. Can I get the charges switched?

When an instructor or department grants you a printing allocation via a Net-Print course account, an email message is sent to you informing you that you need to use the Accounts page to change your designated account so that your printing is charged to the course account instead of your Bursar (or other) account. If this email message is returned as "undeliverable", we notify the department so that they can attempt to contact you by other means.

You may use the Net-Print Feedback mechanism to request a transfer of charges. Such transfers are made at the discretion of the Net-Print staff and will only be done in very unusual circumstances.

Will I still be able to use Net-Print if I haven't paid my bursar bill?

Yes. But you are advised to check with the Bursar's Office regarding the consequences of not paying your bursar bill.

Refunds

How do I request a refund?

If you experience printing problems, you can request a refund. Bring your printout to the Lab Operator and explain the situation. The Operator will, subject to the Net-Print Refund Policy, submit a refund request for each print job for which you want a refund.

Refund requests for jobs printed in CIT Computer Labs may be submitted by the Lab Operator of any CIT Computer Lab. Refund requests for jobs printed in departmental Labs (Net-Print "Partner Labs") must be submitted by the Operator in the Lab in which the jobs were printed.

I forgot to log out and someone billed their Net-Print charges to my account. Do I have to pay for this?

Unfortunately, yes. You are still responsible for these charges. To make sure that other people cannot use your account, you must cancel your Kerberos ticket before you leave any computer that you used with Net-Print.

To cancel your Kerberos ticket, choose the yellow key in the system tray (Windows) or menu bar (Macintosh) and select Logout. Or close the floating Net ID window.

When I print Web pages, I sometimes get extra pages with just a little bit of text at the top or bottom. Can I get a refund for these pages?

Although the extra pages are not due to any flaw in the Net-Print service, you can get a refund for these pages.

My refund request was approved, but I didn't see a credit on my Bursar bill.

Your Net-Print refund is implemented as a credit to your Net-Print account. If it occurs prior to the monthly Bursar billing run, it will result in a decrease in your bill. Otherwise, it will result in credit against future printing.