Printer Troubleshooting – Gather 'Round Homeschool Canada

Our digital products are designed for use with a personal home printer.

Most of our digital customers print from home with no problems, but we receive questions about issues now and then. We are limited with our troubleshooting abilities as each home computer and printer are different and we're not capable of providing extensive tech support, but we have compiled a few troubleshooting steps that seem to resolve 99% of issues. See below:

Printing from a home computer

First and foremost, if you are experiencing any printing issues, we suggest you download the free version of Adobe PDF. Viewing and printing from that platform resolves most printing issues, including strange characters in place of words, images printing with a black background, or error messages when you send the print job to the printer.

Once you have the file loaded in Adobe and you're ready to print, click the print option and then select "Advanced Settings". Once in advanced settings, click on the "Print as Image" option. This eliminates a communication error between the computer and printer and tells the printer to print the document exactly as it appears on the computer. 

We also recommend that you check for updates with your computers, software, and printer as a best practice for keeping things running smoothly.

Outside print companies

From time to time, we receive questions about why a PDF isn't in a format that another printing company requires. Our priority is formatting for home printing, and we assure you that there is nothing wrong with our files. We have a professional print press and print hundreds of notebooks each month without issue. Other printing companies may use different programs and equipment that may impact their ability to print our product.

Gather ‘Round digital files are password-protected to guard against editing. We have received occasional reports of commercial printing companies being unable or unwilling to print files protected by passwords. For most companies, this is not an issue. If you choose to buy digital and have another company do the printing for you, we are not able to provide support and troubleshooting for those companies. 

Printing from a phone or tablet

If you do not have a home computer and need to utilize a phone or tablet, we recommend downloading the app associated with your printer (i.e., the Epson iPrint App if you have an Epson printer). Once you have your app connected to your printer, you can print directly through the app. If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, Apple issues may supersede this suggestion (see below).

Printing Issues with iOS

With recent iOS updates, some users are reporting difficulty printing on Apple devices. This issue is not related to our files. This is a known issue with Apple, and they are working on correcting it. In the meantime, we recommend printing from a computer with the Adobe app, or skip the hassle and let us print the books for you! Contact us if you’re struggling to get your books printed. We’ll get you a coupon code to make the leap to print a bit easier! Watch below for more info!

 

   
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