I tried to print a couple of documents this morning. When I went upstairs, the printer said it was out of ink. I wanted to delete the personal document, so I went to Windows => Printers & scanners and opened the queues for the Konika colour printer and the B&W printer. (Same printer, actually.) Both queues are empty, and both printer paths say No toner/ink.
We use Office 365 in the office. If a printer is unavailable, does it not put the requested print into the queue? Or does it put it somewhere else? (If so, where?)
I don’t really know what I’m talking about, so take this for what it’s worth until someone more knowledgeable comes along:
I think: the print queue is a list of items that are waiting to be sent to the printer. The documents you tried to print did get successfully sent to the printer, so they’re no longer in the queue. The printer still has them but has been unable to print them because it’s out of toner. If you add toner, they’ll print. Or, if you turn the printer off and on, the documents will be deleted from the printer’s memory.
Having troubleshot a bunch of Windows print spooler and print queue issues in offices over the years, IMO @Thudlow_Boink has it exactly.
Nowadays even cheap printers have gobs of RAM and a fast network connection. So the Windows spooler service can stuff the whole document down to the printer in a couple seconds tops, then delete it from the queue. Meanwhile the printer is still waking up its moving parts, and eventually notices a paper jam, or low toner, or no paper, or whatever.
I’ve not seen a consumer printer that will hold jobs in its internal queue across a power cycle. But it’s not inconceivable.
Thanks. The print I didn’t want to print when I’m not here. The Official Document I need didn’t – but a coworker printed it off on a different printer for me earlier.