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My Mac Pro cannot find my HP Printer but my iphone can. And so can my wife's Mac Pro! So what have I got wrong on my Mac?

My Mac Pro cannot find my HP Printer but my iphone can. And so can my wife's Mac Pro! So what have I got wrong on my Mac?

Posted on Jul 22, 2019 3:03 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 22, 2019 12:25 PM

Many printer makers seem to think its is a really "cute trick" to allow your phone to print directly to the Printer. To that end, their default is to turn the Printer into its own Base Station. In a crowded area, this mucks up the Wi-Fi for everyone, and does not work well, and does not allow printing from your Home Network.


So the biggest thing you have to overcome is the maker's zeal for this "cute trick" and set your printer up "the right way" so that it can be used by all devices on your Network.


The correct way is to set it up as a device on your Wi-Fi network, not to start a new network.

To do this the Printer needs to know three things:

1) what network-name is it supposed to join

2) what is the password to get on that network

3) how is it supposed to get an IP address (DHCP or manual at a specified address)


without all three of these, it can't join your home network, so it can't be 'discovered'.


There are basically two ways to get these into the Printer:


a) fat-finger it in through the printer's "front panel"

b) connect using a USB cable first, tell it the stuff, then disconnect the cable


There is one more way, but it is unbearably inconvenient. Leave the USB cable connected and the computer powered on at all times, and print over the network to a queue on the connected computer.


4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 22, 2019 12:25 PM in response to Francisi

Many printer makers seem to think its is a really "cute trick" to allow your phone to print directly to the Printer. To that end, their default is to turn the Printer into its own Base Station. In a crowded area, this mucks up the Wi-Fi for everyone, and does not work well, and does not allow printing from your Home Network.


So the biggest thing you have to overcome is the maker's zeal for this "cute trick" and set your printer up "the right way" so that it can be used by all devices on your Network.


The correct way is to set it up as a device on your Wi-Fi network, not to start a new network.

To do this the Printer needs to know three things:

1) what network-name is it supposed to join

2) what is the password to get on that network

3) how is it supposed to get an IP address (DHCP or manual at a specified address)


without all three of these, it can't join your home network, so it can't be 'discovered'.


There are basically two ways to get these into the Printer:


a) fat-finger it in through the printer's "front panel"

b) connect using a USB cable first, tell it the stuff, then disconnect the cable


There is one more way, but it is unbearably inconvenient. Leave the USB cable connected and the computer powered on at all times, and print over the network to a queue on the connected computer.


Jul 29, 2019 1:53 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thank you for taking the time to try and help me. I have tried inputing my own wireless network into the front panel as you suggested but it is still not working. I have found the 'Direct Wireless' which and I turned the status of that off in case it (the printer) was confusing networks as you suggested so it should now be just using my own network (?). But it is still not working. I will now try the USB cable.

My Mac Pro cannot find my HP Printer but my iphone can. And so can my wife's Mac Pro! So what have I got wrong on my Mac?

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