Printer Only Prints One Page At A Time – How To Fix?

Some users have recently reported an error in the printer forums, that when they try to print multiple pages at once, the printer only prints one page at a time. The printer then either displays a printing complete message or stops printing altogether.

Here I shall discuss how you can easily diagnose the cause of this error and troubleshoot this easily.

Why Does My Printer Only Print One Page At A Time?

Before attempting to solve this error, let us first take a look at some of the reasons why you may be facing this error. This will help you avoid the error further down the line.

One of the most common reasons why only the first page will be printed is because the PDF file failed to send the correct information for all the pages in a document. For some reason, this isn’t enabled by default. When there is a conflict with the printer, the printer will not print multiple copies.

A similar setting is available on the printer, called the Mopier Mode, which can lead to similar errors.

How To Fix If Printer Only Prints One Page At A Time?

Now that you know some probable causes of this error, let us now see where you will find these settings in order to solve this issue.

Solution 1: Review Print Options

Before moving on to more difficult solutions, first, you should review the print settings. This will eliminate the possibility of an error in the print job.

Make sure that the ‘Print all pages’ option is selected in the print layout options. If a range is selected in this setting, only the pages in the range will be printed.

Solution 2: Review Document Compatibility

Some users have reported that if the document was produced in an older version of MS Office, there can be printing problems with some newer printers. Hence, if you created a Word document in Word 2003 or 2007 format, you may not be able to print the document if you have a fairly new printer.

This may be partially because the new printers do not support the older formatting options available in the older versions of the MS Office productivity suite. Fortunately, this is quite easy to solve, as you can easily update the formatting using these simple steps:

1. Open the document using a newer version of MS Word.
2. Click on the Save As option, which will be available under the File option.
3. From the Save as type drop-down menu, select a newer file extension (preferably .docx).
4. Now attempt to print this file.

Check if the printer still prints only the first page of the document. Your error should now be resolved.

Solution 3: Attempting Printing As PDF

As pointed by some users on community forums, this simple workaround can help you if a formatting issue is causing the printer to fail to print all the pages of a document. This solution involves converting the file to the printable document file format (PDF) before printing.

All the formatting made to a document is preserved in the PDF format, hence there should be less or no difficulty while printing the document.

You can convert a document to the PDF format easily right from the Word app itself. Select the appropriate option from the ‘Save as type’ drop-down box.

Open the PDF using a PDF reader (like Adobe Acrobat) and then print the document. All the pages should be printed this time.

Solution 4: Disable Collate Option

Collating refers to the sequencing process that is applied when you print a multiple page document. All the pages and printing components are arranged in a pre-determined sequence to create logical sets. However, if the printer only prints one page at a time, there is a chance that there might be something wrong with the collate option.

If you are printing from MS Word, you will find the collate option right in the print settings. Simply change the option to Uncollated in order to print all the pages.

Note: You may have to arrange the pages manually once the printing job completes.

You will also find the collate option in the Print Properties box that comes up when you start a print job.

Solution 5: Disable MOPIER Mode

If the solutions above did not help you solve this error, you may have to disable the MOPIER protocol. This protocol allows a printer to print only one copy of the document at a time. While enabled, the printer will not print multiple copies. If you want to print multiple copies of a document, you will have to turn this mode off.

To turn off MOPIER mode, follow these steps:

1. Open control panel, either from a Run dialog or from the desktop icon.
2. Change the ‘View by’ to Small icons if it is previously set to Categories.
3. Locate and click on Devices and Printers.
4. Here, locate your printer and right-click on it.
5. Select Properties from the revealed context menu.
6. Under the Device Settings tab, locate the Mopier Mode option.
7. From the drop-down menu, select Disabled.

Now, restart your computer and re-attempt the printing job. You should be able to print all the copies this time.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. Now you know how to fix if you see that the printer only prints one page at a time. Comment below if you found this useful, and to discuss further the same.