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Your HP printer can refuse to take print jobs when it goes in offline state. When your printer sits idle or you stop using it for hours and days, it pauses printing jobs and displays an “HP printer paused” error message on the screen. Apart from this, other factors such as outdated drivers, incorrect printer settings on the PC, faulty ink cartridges, etc lead your printer to a paused situation.

If you are going through this situation and are unable to take prints with your printer, read our easy-to-understand troubleshooting guide.

Take Care Of Given Facts To Fix HP Printer Paused

• Don’t set the printer in offline mode.
• Make sure the printer is set as default.
• Always use quality papers and load them in the tray properly.
• Use original ink cartridges
• Keep printer’s drivers updated
• Try to use your printer on a regular basis so that every internal and external hardware part stays in working condition.
• Use quality ink
• Restart the print spooler service
• Don’t keep the printing device inactive for a long time
• Check the connectivity of the printer

Fix “HP Printer Paused Window 10” & Other Versions

1. Turn Off “Pause Printing”

The first thing you need to do is to disable the “Pause Printing” option when your printer says “paused”.  So, make sure you disable this option by going to the “Control Panel” on your computer system.

1. Initially, open the “Control Panel”.
2. Second, click the “Device & Printer” option.
3. Now, your HP printer will display on the screen.
4. Then, right-click on your printer and choose the “What’s Printing” option.
5. Go to the top of your screen and click the “Printer” menu.
6. Here, uncheck the “Paused Printing” option if it is enabled.
7. After that, give the print command to your printer.

In most cases, the paused error of the HP printer is resolved when a user unticks the “Paused printer” option.

2. Enable Printer As Default

If enabling paused printing didn’t fix the problem, ensure to enable your printer as default. Your computer may fail to recognize your printer if the printer is not set as default.

When you have added more than one printer to your PC, it may be a case that the printer you are using isn’t set as default. Therefore, all your printing commands are sent to another printer that you don’t use for printing.

Hence, go and enable this option for your desired printer and then, give print commands.

1. First, go to “Control Panel”.
2. Secondly, click the “Device and Printer” section.
3. Then, find your printer and right-click on it.
4. Now, click “See What’s Printing”.
5. Thereafter, click on “Printer’s Menu”.
6. Choose the “Set As Default” option from the drop-down.
7. Once the printer is selected as default, restart your device, and then, try to print something.

3. Update Or Re-Install Drivers

In case your HP printer is still in a paused state, make sure you are using updated and appropriate drivers. The printer may stop functioning if you haven’t installed the latest drivers.

So, you can reinstall the drivers by following the given procedure.

1. Begin by accessing “Control Panel”.
2. Thereafter, go to “Device & Printer” by clicking on it.
3. Then, select your printer and click on “Uninstall”.
4. Moreover, follow on-screen instructions, and once the drivers are removed, restart the device.
5. Now, visit HP’s official site by launching the browser.
6. Also, go to the “Download” section and provide the printer’s details such as name, model number, etc.
7. Once you submit all the details, click “Ok”.
8. Here, all the latest driver updates will display on the screen.
9. So, choose the available drivers based on your printer’s requirements.
10. Afterward, follow the instructions to download the drivers.
11. After the successful downloading of the drivers, the .exe driver file will be saved on your PC.
12. Ultimately, run that file to install drivers.

4. Clear HP Printer Paper Jam

This is an alternative troubleshooting tip to fix the “HP printer paused” error. The printer can cause paper jam problems because the papers you installed in the tray are stuck. As a consequence of this, you must remove every paper from the printer to clear the jam. Take out the printer’s tray and find and remove the jammed paper.

5. Remove Unrequired Printers From Your Device

If there have been connected too many printers in your computer system, it seems obvious to face printer problems. So, to get rid of it, delete all unimportant printers from your device.

Follow the steps given to delete extra printers from your PC.

1. To begin with, go to the “Start” button.
2. Then, enter the “Control Panel” to open it.
3. Next, click “Device & Printers”.
4. Now, choose the printer you want to remove.
5. Click the “Remove Device” option.
6. Again click “Ok” to confirm deleting the device.

Using this process, you can delete all devices which you consider unnecessary, from your PC.

6. Use Windows Troubleshooter Program

If you have tried all the above-mentioned techniques and still printer’s paused situation keeps occurring, run the troubleshooter program.

Windows troubleshooter is an in-built program, which is responsible to fix device errors. By running this program on your device, various printer errors will be resolved.

Steps to use troubleshooting software:-

1. First, go to “Settings” of the system.
2. Next, click the “Devices” option.
3. After that, click “Printer & Scanner”.
4. Now, search and click “Run Troubleshooter”.
5. Here, wait and let the program detect and fix the current issues of your PC and the printer.

HP Printer Paused Mac

If your Mac’s printer is in “Paused”, it could be because you have set the printer in offline mode. Apart from this, you can follow the above-mentioned tips if the printer is paused on Mac.

Besides this, you can check a few simple steps to unpause the HP printer on Mac

• At first, log into your Mac device as “Administrator”.
• After that, click the “Apple” icon.
• Now, go to “System Preferences”.
• Then, choose “Printers and Scanners”.
• Click on “Paused printer”.
• Also, click “Print Queue”.
• Finally, choose “Jobs”.

Hopefully, your printer problem will be fixed but if not, contact HP support team. 

Conclusion 

To help you fix the “HP printer paused” issue, we have provided some simple troubleshooting techniques. In case the error still occurs, send us your query and we’ll reach out to you with solutions.