Collated printing taking FOREVER in InDesign & Acrobat

[Community of Hope]

We recently upgraded our printer from a Ricoh MP C6502 to C6503 and ever since, I've had numerous problems printing collated copies of a document from both InDesign and Acrobat. The "Printing" dialogue box seems to just endlessly reset (see screenshot). I've only been able to print collated documents in Preview on OSX - so it seems that Adobe not communicating well with Ricoh is likely the problem.

Anyone else experience ridiculous collated printing times? Any solutions?

[BobLevine]

Have you contacted Ricoh?

[Randy Hagan · Accepted solution]

I think Bob's steering you the right way on this ...

I'd start with maybe first doing a search on Ricoh's support site to see if anyone else is having the same problems you are with your Ricoh C6503. Then contact your Ricoh rep with detailed information about:

1) how much collated printing you're doing,

2) how much time it's taking for you to print collated printing, and

3) which programs you're having problems with ... I'd see how other programs you're working with (e.g. MSOffice applications, other documentation tools you may be using) handle collated print jobs too.

Whether you have more problems or not, being able to pinpoint where you are (and are not) having them will help your Ricoh technicians pinpoint where the problem lies and what can possibly be done to fix it.

Good luck, and let us know how things work out for you,

Randy Hagan

[Community of Hope]

I called in our rep and he was shocked to find out that we did not have PostScript installed on the machine... He's not sure how we've been printing from OSx the way we have, but that was the problem. Just really smelled like Adobe when it worked in other programs like Preview, but the lack of PostScript makes sense.

[Randy Hagan]

Thanks for getting back with us. As we all know, Adobe software can go wrong too ... but sleuthing all the steps of the process make it easier to pinpoint where the real problems are. Congrats on your troubleshooting skills.

For some heavy duty office systems, PostScript is a simple software install. For others, it may require a printer substitution. But most dealers work hard to keep their customers happy, so I'm confident that your rep will work with you.

In the meantime, you might want to try printing PDF files for your collated jobs. PDF files are designed to print on non-PostScript printers too, and may get you around your collated printing slowdowns. You can find out more about creating PDF files directly from InDesign here:

Export InDesign files to Adobe PDF

This may get you around your problems for at least the short term. No guarantees. But this kind of process has helped a lot of users with non-PostScript printers. And sometimes, as your rep shared, things that aren't supposed to work somehow do.

Hope this helps,

Randy