Troubleshooting job submission issues

The problem - users clicked “print” but say that the job isn’t visible on their mobile app or the printer’s embedded Hive screen when they try to release it. This is a distinct problem from a job that is visible but fails to print—for troubleshooting that scenario, see Troubleshooting print release issues .

Check the Job Trace

If a specific print job isn’t behaving as expected, try checking the Job Trace. It shows how the job traveled from the user’s device, through the system, to the printer—and where it might’ve gone wrong.

See Troubleshooting print job problems using Job Trace for steps on how to find and interpret Highlighted Issues.

Printing with PaperCut Hive and Pocket overview

The PaperCut Printer is created when the PaperCut Hive and Pocket client is installed on a user’s workstation. It is an important part of the print workflow. Understanding its components helps with troubleshooting.

The PaperCut Printer differs from a traditional Windows print queue in three key ways:

• Driver: It uses the PaperCut Global Postscript Driver on Windows.
• Port: It uses an Internet Port (IPP), such as http://localhost:9265/printers/papercutpocket.
• User Token: A token links the print job to a specific, authenticated user.

Make sure pc-print-client-service.exe is running

A print job will not be submitted if the Print Client Service is not running.

1. On a Windows computer, open Task Manager.
2. Navigate to the Details tab and confirm that pc-print-client-service.exe is running.
3. If the service is not running, go to C:\Program Files\PaperCut Pocket\data.
4. Double-click pc-print-client-service.exe to start it manually.

Users sometimes disable this service from the Startup tab in Task Manager to speed up boot times. You can check this setting and re-enable it if needed.

Watch out for the Group Policy “Turn off printing over HTTP”

This Windows group policy setting can prevent printing via the PaperCut Printer. The policy must be disabled for printing to work correctly. For more details, refer to the article “Test Page failed to print” error with Mobility Print and PaperCut Pocket/Hive .

“The printer is not responding” (macOS)

MacOS the PaperCut Printer says “Printing - The Printer is not responding”. This error message on macOS usually means the user has not completed the linking process. This can happen if you deployed the client with Jamf Pro.

To resolve this issue, ensure the pc-print-client-service is running using the Activity Monitor. This ensures that the PaperCut client is actively processing print jobs.

Here are the steps to check the service:

1. Open Activity Monitor from the Applications > Utilities folder, or use Spotlight Search.
2. Use the Filter box in the top right corner.
3. Type pc-print-client-service into the filter.
4. If the service is running, it will appear in the list of processes.

Users might need to open the invitation email to finish linking their client to their account. For steps, see: Set up a new computer or mobile phone.

Print jobs stuck in “See what’s printing” (Windows)

Print jobs should not appear in the “See what’s printing” section of the print driver. If your job does seem to get stuck there, it’s likely that something has gone wrong.

In some cases, we have seen antivirus or firewall software interfere with the IPP port used by Hive. When this happens, the port can be removed automatically, and the PaperCut printer may fall back to the default LPT1 port, which will not work.

To avoid this, make sure your queue is using an IPP connection. You can confirm this by checking the printer properties under the “Ports” tab.

The print job is cancelled after 15 minutes

In this scenario, the job never appears on the release screen and is automatically cancelled after 15 minutes. We’ve seen this happen when the print job is interrupted by third-party Data Loss Prevention (DLP) software like Senso. For more information, see Senso Troubleshooting .

Test cloud access

Make sure that your PaperCut Pocket and Hive clients are able to communicate with PaperCut’s services in the Cloud. Use the following PowerShell command to test connectivity from the affected workstation:

test-netconnection mqtt2.notifications.cloud.papercut.com -port 443

The client uses the MQTT protocol to report and intelligently route print jobs to printers. For full details on required cloud endpoint connectivity, see the system requirements .

Test network connectivity between nodes

Verify that the different nodes on your network can communicate with each other. Try to see if you can access the status page for a few of the edge nodes in your network. Prioritize this check against any Super Nodes that you may have in the environment.

To access the status page, open a web browser on a computer on the network, and open: https://[other-node-ip]:9264/status - where [other-node-ip] is the IP address of another node that should be online and accessible from the computer that you’re testing on.

If this succeeds, you should see a JSON-formatted page with some information about your Edge Mesh — including some version numbers and Organization ID. To be extra confident in this test, repeat it with a few different pairs of edge nodes on your network.

If that doesn’t work, check the Firewall ports and networking section to make sure that all the required ports are open to let the different nodes communicate with each other.

Further troubleshooting

The next step is to collect log files from the affected user’s workstation to share with your PaperCut support contact.

These logs can help us diagnose the problem:

• Edge Node Logs — These logs provide important context and show if there’s any kind of connectivity issue between the users’ computer and PaperCut Hive. For steps see: Edge Node Logs .
• PaperCut Printer Client Logs — These logs show what happens after the user clicks “Print” and the job is processed on their local computer. For steps see: PaperCut Printer Client Logs .

With logs in hand, reach out to us through the PaperCut Support Portal . We’ll put you in contact with your authorized PaperCut partner or look into the issue ourselves.