InDesign Printing Wrong Page

[sarapia777]

Greetings.

I am printing a 104p book, 6x9, double sided, no facing pages (book will be spiral bound). Yesterday I successfully printed one book. Today, I tried to make a second copy, printed all odd pages, but when attempting to print the even pages, Indesign insists on beginning on P4 rather than on P2. P2 is blank and I have "print blank pages" checked but it insists on printing P4 on the back of P1. I thought I could work around it by printing pp 1-3 manually and starting the printing with P4, but now - guess what - it's printing P4, then P8. 

I am not using the "print booklet" option, by the way. 

I have deleted my print presets a couple times, also rebooted computer, InDesign is up to date.

I don't understand why it worked perfectly yesterday but not today.

Going nuts. At it for hours now.

What am I missing? 

Thank you.

[Peter Spier]

Specifically I was thinking to check the print blank pages setting again, but I'm thinking you may need to reset the prefs if that's correct.

What is the physical printer that's causing the problem?

[sarapia777]

I spent a while speaking with an agent on the phone while he was also on my computer. we tried lots of things.

I now know that the files that printed correctly to PDF exhibit the same behavior - even pages begin printing on page 4.

I tried an earlier version of InD, same issue. I tried an earlier file of same doc, same issue (but don't forget - a recent file of this doc printed just fine). 

Older books print fine. Completely new doc (that does not contain files from this book) prints fine.

We even removed a couple of pages from the doc and it still began on the new p4. The printer I use with InDesign is Canon Pro1000. When I printed the file in question on my HP office printer it printed all the pages from InDesign. So, if the problem is with the Canon, why does it print  every other project just fine? The tech is going to do a little more research and get back to me on Monday. Seems I'm the only person in the universe with this issue. Meantime, I've got a work-around (print the first few pages idividually, then run the print job. beginning with P4), which I should not have to do. Oh well.

[Peter Spier]

I'm guessing there's some setting hidden in the driver that skips blank pages.

[Peter Spier]

I don't have your Canon Pro 1000, but I do have a Canon LBP 622C and I just did a deep dive int the advanced settings in the printer driver. Lo and behold there is, indeed, a skip blank pages setting.

On my printer there are two auto choices, along with Off.

[sarapia777]

The tech and I agreed that the "skip blank pages" function is the issue. I will look for this. 

[sarapia777]

I can't find any kind of menu that looks like that anywhere in my Canon folder. 

[Peter Spier]

Sorry for the delay. As I said, it was a deep dive and the setting is pretty well hidden. Nor am I certain it's part of your printer driver.

That said, one way to get there is to open Windows Printers and Scanners page in Settings (Control Panel) and choose your printer, then click the Manage button. In the next screen Click Printer Properties and in that dialog check the Enable advanced printing features box, if it exists, and click the Printing Defaults button.

In that dialog click the Finishing tab, then the Advanced Settings button.

You should also be able to get to the same dialog from the InDesign print dialog if you click the Setup button, choose your printer from the list, then click Preferences.

[sarapia777]

Peter, no problem. Happy to report I was able to print two more books using the work around of printing pages 1-7 individually, then printing the even pages beginning on P8. I wouldn't want to do this on a regular basis, however. Luckily, so far it only affects this one file.

Anyway, I have delved and dived into my printer's settings from every direction, clicked on every possibility, including all you mentioned, but can't find that menu. We'll see what happens on Monday when the Adobe tech calls me back. Will also call Canon if necessary. For now, I'm okay 🙂

[Peter Spier]

I decided to install the driver to see if I could find a setting that looks like the culprit. As you said, no skip blanks.

There is, however, a paper saving setting (with no explanation of what it does). You don't have that enabled by default do you? Might be the problem...

[sarapia777]

I spoke with Canon, there is no option for fprinting blank pages in my pro 1000. We uninstalled, reinstalled. No fix. 

Adobe is following up again with me today via phone. They are still insisting it's the printer, Canon says no, the printer does what the program tells it to do.

I've run a few more tests, created a test file, still having the same problem. Odd pages and even pages. InDesign is not recognizing P2 (blank) and starts printing on P4. It does recognize other blank pages further into the document, for example, p 6. 

I thought this was a problem only with that one file, but now I see it's everything. 

So I either continue with my work-around of printing the first few pages individually, or never have blank pages at the beginning of any of my docs. (Until/unless this is fixed)

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Can you put empty TextFrame on the "blank" page - or if it won't work - not empty TextFrame on the edge of the page? 

Kind of forcing InDesign to treat "blank" page as not empty? 

[sarapia777]

I added white text. Didn't work.

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[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

Try putting a text frame out in the pasteboard area at the top of the page, but deep enough that it runs onto the printable area, and put a current page number marker (in black) in it, top aligned so the text itself is on the pastebaord, but the frame is still on the page. You could do this on the Parent/Master page.

That seems to work here -- printing to PDF with print blank pages deselected still gave me 106 pages

[sarapia777]

Yes! That totally worked. Genius. I previously did not have a problem printing to PDF - all the pages went through, (but when I printed from Acrobat, it exhibited the same weird behavior). 

Great solution, on one hand, but there's a part of me that still wants to know why. 

Thank you for your time and trouble! 

[Peter Spier]

You're quite welcome.

I totally agree that this is a kludge and there's something really wonky going on.

Did you reset the prefs yet to see if that would help?

[sarapia777]

Okay, well that worked exactly ONCE. So I'm back to printing the first few pages manually and then starting the whole job on P 8. I'll be happy if it's that easy. The hours I spent testing and futzing around...what a nightmare. Sorry to disappoint...

[Peter Spier]

Hmmm.

I'm beginning to think you have some other software conflict. Try starting the PC in Safe Mode and run InDesign before loading anything else and see if it prints correctly.

[sarapia777]

PS I marked your post as correct answer, but is it the correct answer or the correct workaround 🙂

[sarapia777]

Update: Still no worky. I've had a few phone sessions with Adobe, also with Canon. I reset my defaults, tried various other things, no deal.

However, I have settled into a smooth work flow by printing the first few pages individually, then beginning the job (for even sides) on P8.

I created another project, another spiral-bound photo book, with no blank pages and it's working perfectly.

So I'll just bide my time and eventually some update or other might fix it. Meantime, no blank pages at beginning of books. Thanks, everybody.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Why can't you fool InDesign with some TextFrame at the edge - as you've been advised? Why do you have to make your life so complicated? 

[sarapia777]

I tried that and it didn't work. Trust me, I tried everything known to mankind and it didn't work. None of it worked. And my work around is not complicated. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Let's try again - as maybe you've missed my 1st try - why can't you make PDF and print from Acrobat? 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That would likely be a solution, but not a fix. If the goal is to get this thing printed by 5, this is exactly the workaround to apply.

I suspect there is an avoidable fault in the document, though, and running that down would probably save work and prevent it from occurring again.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

There have been already a lot of threads, where people were complaining about problems in printing directly from InDesign - PDF + Acrobat always been the best solution. 

Maybe something is "wrong" with the OP's printer or driver - settings - and not the InDesign ?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Sure, but this is not in any way a "usual" problem. Print problems usually revolve around trying to use ID's booklet printing option, which is somewhere between fussy, fragile and broken. Just printing any range of pages in a document should be problem-free... at least, I can't bring to mind any recent threads where a user couldn't do fairly straightforward printing tasks.

I suspect there's some confusion about page layout re "facing pages" that's led to some unorthodox page and numbering setup. I can't quite make all of the OP's statements line up, so clearing up the confusion would be productive.