Help with printing remotely

Author
Discussion

damci

Original Poster:

963 posts

219 months

Wednesday 8th May
quotequote all
What’s the easiest way to print remotely to my printer which is located in my office? The printer is connected to my office router by a wifi connection and when I’m in the office I can print directly to the printer as I’m connected to the office wifi.

I’m visiting the US later this month and I need to be able to print directly to my office printer in the UK so any help would be appreciated!

Actual

779 posts

107 months

Wednesday 8th May
quotequote all
TeamViewer.

Free for personal use.

Have an old computer sat at home. Take remote control and transfer the file to be printed. On the home located computer load up the file in the relevant application (e.g. Word) and print.

TeamViewer may even have remote printing capabilities.

Miserablegit

4,036 posts

110 months

Thursday 9th May
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Some printers have an inbuilt email address to send the document to in order to enable remote printing

biggiles

1,738 posts

226 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
Is it a home office or "real office"?

In my home office, I've recently used Tailscale, and can now easily print remotely, direct from my phone/laptop. Handy. It just needs a spare machine sitting at home (and also gives "free" VPN abilities, if you have decent bandwidth). But that might be more complex than other solutions.

Does the printer have any clever "cloud" capabilities built-in? Some do.

mmm-five

11,277 posts

285 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
Cloud printing is probably the simplest...if the computer you normally print from is the one travelling with you.

All the big brands offer it even on their low level machines.
  • HP Print Anywhere
  • Epson Connect
  • Canon Cloud Printing
  • Brother Cloud Print
  • etc.

damci

Original Poster:

963 posts

219 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
It's an Epson printer but unfortunately it doesn’t have an email address, and I don’t have an old computer I can setup in my office so I guess that rules out cloud printing.

The TeamViewer option might work, I will investigate that.

mmm-five

11,277 posts

285 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
damci said:
It's an Epson printer but unfortunately it doesn’t have an email address, and I don’t have an old computer I can setup in my office so I guess that rules out cloud printing.

The TeamViewer option might work, I will investigate that.
Give us the model number, as it will let us find out whether it does cloud printing or not (doesn't need to be connected to a PC, just to wifi/ethernet and left on/in standby).

https://www.epsonconnect.com

https://www.epsonconnect.com/faq/en/index.htm


damci

Original Poster:

963 posts

219 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
Its an Epson SC-F500 printer, I don't think cloud printing is supported

biggiles

1,738 posts

226 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
damci said:
Its an Epson SC-F500 printer, I don't think cloud printing is supported
That's a pretty impressive printer, with 24" roller! But yes, it doesn't look like it has cloud printing. It's also the kind of printer where I'd want someone to keep an eye on it while printing, if things go wrong it could get messy quickly.

Ironically, a basic £100 A4 Brother laser (forum favourite :-) )will do cloud printing easily. Maybe, if you only need to print A4 remotely, an option is to get a second printer for plain A4 to avoid over-burdening the fancy printer.

mmm-five

11,277 posts

285 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
damci said:
Its an Epson SC-F500 printer, I don't think cloud printing is supported
No, I don't believe so.

The closest you'd get would be having a dedicated print-server for it, so you could connect to remotely.

But as others have said, it's not something I'd want printing with no supervision...and that's assuming it would come out of standby mode when needed.

damci

Original Poster:

963 posts

219 months

Thursday 9th May
quotequote all
The print server might be an option but I wouldn't know where to start with it so I may have to pay someone to come and install it for me.

biggiles

1,738 posts

226 months

Friday 10th May
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damci said:
The print server might be an option but I wouldn't know where to start with it so I may have to pay someone to come and install it for me.
Perhaps more options will be suggested if you explain what you are trying to do? If the objective is to come back to a neat pile of A4 printed sales orders, that's very different to wanting to print custom full-colour 24" proofs. And why does it need to be done immediately, who is waiting by the printer to take the sheets out? Why can't you want until you return to print them?

There (certainly used to be) postal printers too: print to a cloud device, pay a small fee, and they post the printouts to you. That may be an option.

Scooobydont

395 posts

195 months

Friday 10th May
quotequote all
VPN?