It’s the universal law of office equipment: It usually goes haywire right when you’re on a deadline. And since printing is often the last, seconds-to-spare step, printer problems are a special kind of infuriating. If you’re looking to upgrade your equipment, read our guide to reliable black-and-white printers. In the meantime, we asked tech experts how to troubleshoot the most common issues.

First off, some advice for any printer issue (actually, any equipment issue): Check that it’s plugged in and turned on. Don’t laugh, just do it, says Ted Needleman of ReviewGeek, who also lab-tests products for a national office-technology consulting company. “It’s usually the simple mistakes that screw you up,” he notes. 

Plugs and power buttons all check out? Next, try unplugging everything. Wait 30 seconds, then reconnect. Technicians call this “power cycling,” and it’s much like force-quitting and then restarting a software program that has frozen. Your printer’s internal software (known as firmware) will reset itself, giving you a clean slate to try again. 

What if your printer’s panel says it’s online and your computer still can’t find it? Check that the two are on the same Wi-Fi network. It’s not as obvious as it sounds. Maybe you connected to your neighbor’s Wi-Fi without noticing. Or your computer may have automatically switched networks because it’s programmed to seek the strongest signal available—you might have both a 2G network and a 5G network, for instance, and their strength fluctuates throughout the day. Or maybe you use a Wi-Fi extender that creates a second network. If your printer, which has less sophisticated software than your computer, remained on the original network, you’ll have a disconnect.

The final, foolproof fix if you can’t print wirelessly? Connect directly. A USB cable that directly connects your computer to your printer bypasses all connectivity problems. It’s also useful as a troubleshooting step: If your printer won’t work when it’s physically tethered, it certainly won’t work wirelessly. Keeping a USB cable on hand is an effective under-$10 backup plan. (Buy Side recommends this cable.)

One caveat about cables: They break, weaken and come loose, especially if you’re using a wired printer shoved into a tight space, requiring the cables to bend, snake around other equipment or plug into their ports at odd angles. Checking them should be your first tech-support step.

Ugh, that grinding, wheels-spinning sound. Paper jams are the worst. They’re also pretty preventable, says Chris Glass, owner of Portland Printer Place, in Portland, Ore., which services and repairs printers. 

The simplest fix for a jam: Open your printer, remove the paper tray and extract the jammed sheet yourself. 

A common culprit for jams is cheap paper, Needleman says. Flimsy paper wrinkles more easily as it feeds from the tray through the rollers. It breaks down more quickly, too, and tiny paper fibers might cling to your printer’s rollers, making the feeding process less and less smooth each time you print.

This goes for reused paper, as well. Yes, it’s environmentally sound to use the blank side of already printed sheets, but it can be a recipe for jams. That paper has already been curled around the printer rollers once, so it won’t feed from the tray as seamlessly a second time. And if it’s been sitting in a messy pile, it’s more likely to have tiny tears or to have absorbed moisture from the air, which will make it cling to the rollers.

Machines may also need some occasional housekeeping. The rollers that feed the paper can collect paper “dust” (even high-quality paper sheds some fibers). You can use a soft cloth dampened with some isopropyl alcohol to wipe down the rollers, and then let them dry before you try to print, recommends Craig Lloyd, a former writer at repair guide iFixit, who has also created consumer electronics repair guides.

Last but not least among paper-jam causes: user error. Did you place the paper straight in the tray? Are the guides that feed each sheet into the guts of the printer flush against the paper’s edges? An extra minute to be finicky with paper placement can mean many fewer spent unjamming the machine (and tearing at your hair).

Blank pages are a disheartening bait-and-switch. The printer hums happily, pages glide into the output tray and…nothing.

Again, start by ruling out the simplest problem: Are you out of ink? Maybe you didn’t notice that your seldom-used color cartridge has run dry, but in many printers, if that’s the case, you can’t print in black and white, either.

Or the print heads might be clogged, an especially common problem if you use your printer only occasionally, Lloyd says. Most printers have a self-cleaning feature (the settings panel might read “clean print heads” or “auto nozzle check”). If that doesn’t solve the problem and you’re feeling intrepid, clean the print heads and/or the ink cartridges manually (this is for inkjet printers only): Pop out the cartridge and use a Q-tip moistened with isopropyl alcohol to swipe the contacts. They might be little nubs or a small rectangular patch; they’ll probably be the only thing on the cartridge that looks metallic. If, while the cartridge is out, you can also easily access the places on the printer body where those contacts, well, make contact, swab those, too. 

And one last note: If you frequently run into problems with ink flow, consider buying a laser printer.

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