Table of Contents

Troubleshooting Service-Print

  • Nothing is printed
  • Local printers are not updated

Nothing is printed

Here are the steps you can take if your documents are not being printed. The steps listed here apply to the service-print.

Check your printer

Your direct printer must be configured to send print jobs to the print queue. Otherwise, it will not be picked up by the print service.

Check your direct printer and make sure that you have selected the Queue Jobs option.

Queue print jobs option

Check the print queue

It you set the Queue Jobs on your printer, the next print should go to the print queue in Business Central.

Make a fresh print job and check that it is on the print queue.

Print job on print queue

Disable deletion of finished jobs

Finished print jobs may be removed from the print queue. Go to the direct print settings and disable the feature that deletes the finished jobs. Keeping the finished jobs will help us debug the printing process.

Disable print job deletion

Is the print service running?

If you see the print job on the print queue in Business Central but the status never changes from Ready, your print service is most likely not connected.

Check under Windows services that the print service is running.

Running print service

Is the print service connected?

Open the direct print program from the start menu and check your environment status. The status should be Waiting and green.

If the status is not waiting, there may be an error message in the status area. Click the link above the message to get help with the message.tg

Open the log file

View the log file for your environment. You should be able to see your print job in the log. Maybe there is an error message that will help debug the problem.

View print service log

You should be able to see the print job in the log file.

If you still have the job in the Business Central print queue with the status Ready, it may be a routing problem.

Pause Windows print queue

If the log for your print service shows that your document is printed, the next step is to follow the print job to the Windows spooler queue.

You can open the printer Windows printer queue from your Windows printers or from the direct print user interface.

Open print queue

After a print job is sent to the printer, it is removed from the Windows print queue. It may be printed so fast that we cannot see it in the queue. Therefore, you should pause the printer while searching for the print job.

Pause printer

Blocking print dialogs

If the print service has trouble printing or your print job never shows up in the paused printer queue, you can do a simple test with Notepad.

Open Notepad and print a short text to the printer.

Important

The Notepad test must be run on the same machine and as the same user that runs the print service.

Maybe your printer driver will show a dialog, which is blocking the automated print.

Routing error

Routing of print jobs is a powerful feature that will help you distribute print jobs to the right print service. However, if it is set up in the wrong way, your print jobs will not be picked up by the correct print service.

By default the routing table is empty and you should leave it empty unless you run multiple print services with an overlap of local printer names.

If jobs are left in ready state in the Business Central print queue, you can try to remove all entries from the routing table. This ensures that if a print service has a local printer that mathces the print job, it is downloaded and printed.

More on routing

Local printers are not updated

You have a lookup list of local printers when you define a direct printer in Business Central. The connected print service maintains a list of connected printers for this purpose. If you cannot see any printers in the lookup, then you should check if your print service is running and connected.

Connected printers

Inspect the print job

From the print queue in Business Central you can download the document. Try to download and open the document to see if the content of the print job is as expected.

Windows event log

The Windows event log can hold additional information on where the problem is. Here is a link for more in formation about the logs.

Direct Print Logs

Disable extensions

Printing in Business Central uses events. If other extensions are subscribing to the printing events and interrupting the printing process, you can experience different kinds of symptoms. Maybe you don't get a print job in the print queue, or maybe the document on the print job is empty. If you experience this, you should try to uninstall other ISV or custom extensions to find the one causing the problem.