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Quicken Mac Print Fail

CMOT-TMPV

For the past month, Quicken has been printing PALE GREY and not black. All other applications print fine. Quicken is the ONLY application that doesn't. Checks are so light the bank won't take them. Oddly, the reports print with a proper black header so it's clearly something within Quicken.

First I tried chat, but the agent Luis was inattentive (clearly handling about 10 chats at once) and had me reinstall the software not bothering to tell me my data might get lost (GRRR) and had no idea where my backup data was and when I found it, it wasn't current. I left in frustration. I am not sure he had Mac experience.

I called and got Luis but he said he wasn't the same Luis. He wanted to Share Screen to see but we got disconnected in the process. I called a second time and got a different agent but he couldn't hear me. Third call, the agent wouldn't call in (I asked) and couldn't understand why my print dialog box didn't match his (he had an option called "Format As" that I didn't).

I have Sequoia 15.1 and Quicken Version 7.10.0 (Build 710.55343.100) and a Brother L3770CDW with the latest firmware. (Agent had me make sure everything was current.)

A heavily redacted sample print i(SCAN) and my print dialog box (Screenshot) are attached below.

I have tried printing in B&W, color, and anything else I can think of.

Screenshot 2024-11-01 at 20.42.42.jpg

Scan 1.jpeg

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Accepted answers

John_in_NC

Thanks for the update, and well wishes for a speedy recovery from the pneumonia. I am glad you got this resolved.

jacobs

Wow, so sorry to hear of your medical problems. I hope you're well along the path to recovery.

And thanks for letting us know the resolution, and that it turned out to be an obscure problem with the printer's software. It's also nice to hear that Brother's technical support actually knew about this issue and how to reset things to get you back up and running.

All comments

John_in_NC

Your printer dialog has a warning "Optical Photoconductor near end-of life." That will indeed cause light and or fuzzy printing. You can even see in the footer of your report that the line has varying shades of black. My guess is that the bolded headers mask the problem. Checks are not bold.

You can view a report by clicking on PDF and "Open in Preview". If you see a normal appearance there, I would suspect it is time to change the drum/and or toner cartridge in your printer.

I can't explain why your other documents print fine, but I don't know what you are printing and if they have a darker font.

I haven't heard of others having this problem, and my prints/checks are jet black.

UKR

Just firing a shot into the dark here, hoping to hit something …

Even the transaction detail lines in your report print in grey color when, IMHO, they should be black.
If you haven't done so already, check the Print Preset that you are using for settings like ink/toner saving mode or Draft Mode and be sure to turn that off.

Your printer's a black and white printer. Your reports in the Mac probably preview in color, with black, grey, red and green … is there a setting to preview in black and white without grey tones? Or is there a setting to print in black and white, without grey tones simulating color?

jacobs

In the Print Checks dialog box, there is a checkbox to change the font to bold; have you tried checking that to see if it improves legibility of your checks?

That doesn't explain why thew text on your reports is also gray instead of black; I'm just it in case it would help you print a passable check.

As for the gray color of text, this seems like it has to be something with either your printer or your Mac's printer settings, as nothing has changed with the Quicken program and others aren't experiencing the same issue. Since you have a color printer and have it set to print in black-and-white, have you tried turning it to color printing to see if that produces a better black?

Here's another thing to test: try printing your report to a PDF file. Is the text black or not? Then try to print the PDF. Again, is the text black or not? This might help narrow the source of the problem.

CMOT-TMPV

Yes, the bold setting makes the font THICKER but not darker. I'll try the PDF thing and report back. Again, the mystery is why is ONLY Quicken affected.

The folks on the phone insist there should be a "Format as" option on the print setting menu which there isn't (and wasn't).

The "drum" issue is the YELLOW drum. I got a set and replaced them all. Brother is sending a replacement. It's new but it won't reset itself automatically or manually. It shouldn't affect anything. I can print a full-colour test page just fine. I can print from Word, Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Office Libre, Thunderbird, Firefox, Chrome, Google Docs, without any issue.

This is a COLOUR printer (one person seems to suggest it's B&W).

UKR

This is a COLOUR printer (one person seems to suggest it's B&W).

My mistake. Sorry. The printer itself is a color printer, but the Print Preset you're using changes to "Black and white" mode.

You may want to try a different Print Preset which turns on Color Mode and see if that solves the problem.

jacobs

Again, print your report to a PDF file (e.g. print the report like normal, but int he Print dialog box, click on the PDF button to saver it as a PDF rather than printing it). Is the text black or not? When you open the PDF, does the text look black or gray? If black, and you then print the PDF, does ti print black or gray.

CMOT-TMPV

To answer both of you (and thanks for your help). The PDF is normal-looking. I've tried every present in colour and B&W. I am going to replace the toner Monday just in case it's bad. I should also have the new yellow drum unit from Brother. I am also going to call Brother further on Monday for their opinion. <please hold🙂>

jacobs

The PDF is normal-looking.

Okay, so that tells us something. Do you mean onscreen it's normal? And what if you then print the PDF. Does that come out normal, too, or is it light?

If the printed PDF looks good, then I really think it points to some setting in the Print dialog box in Quicken for your printer. Quicken to PDF is good, PDF to printer is good: that means the printer is okay, and Quicken's generation of pages is okay. If so, there must be some printer setting in that dialog box which is causing it to use a "draft" or "toner saver" mode which is resulting n the light text.

John_in_NC

Again, and as I noted in my first post, I suspect your problem lies within your printer's hardware. You can see from your scans that you have failing print engine/toner issues. I am not a betting man, but when I suggested to print to PDF, I knew you would see satisfactory results. This poor quality print including varying darkness/ghosting is not a printer settings issue:

Screenshot 2024-11-03 at 11.22.31 PM.png

I think other programs are likely giving you issues, but go unnoticed as you aren't trying to send checks for clearing.

I hope the toner/drums solve your problems.

jacobs

You can see from your scans that you have failing print engine/toner issues. This poor quality print including varying darkness/ghosting is not a printer settings issue…

@John_in_NC So how would a hardware/supply problem be responsible for this problem printing only reports and checks in Quicken, while other applications (and, in fact, the column headings in the same Quicken report) print solid blacks?

I think other programs are likely giving you issues, but go unnoticed as you aren't trying to send checks for clearing.

But @CMOT-TMPV reports: "I can print from Word, Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Office Libre, Thunderbird, Firefox, Chrome, Google Docs, without any issue."

when I suggested to print to PDF, I knew you would see satisfactory results.

I agree. But the question I've asked which he hasn't yet answered is whether printing the good-looking PDF prints like the PDF on-screen with solid blacks, or prints identical to the poor-quality results when printing directly from Quicken.

John_in_NC

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20460130#Comment_20460130

Jacob: Your screenshot of the Quicken report shows very poor quality print as well-the kind back in the old days (before printer warnings) where we would pull/shake the toner cartridges to just get a few more prints for a user. I wouldn't even try that now in fear of the printer rejecting the cartridge.

I don't know what the OP is printing in other documents, but I suspect the fonts/importance make the problem less obvious. I could be wrong, as I am not there, but based on what I see here, the printer is likely having issues.

CMOT-TMPV

You wanted an answer but I ended up in hospital so you weren't getting one. (While I'd like to blame my printing issues on this mess, it was pneumonia).

So you are right and you are wrong at the same time. I called Brother today. After being placed on hold several times while they consulted with a "product engineer" (and after replacing the faulty yellow drum before I called) who said there was an obscure known issue with that series of printer. It manifests itself under certain printing conditions ("rendering engine" is what I think he said) which Quicken (and several other programs they mentioned but I don't use) use to send data to the printer. These may not always be what Apple recommends. I was told the Sequoia update caused a number of issues with both printing and scanning. (Indeed my scanner stopped working until I deleted it from the list and re-added it.)

So if you have a faulty drum cartridge, this creates an issue with the printer (duh). Replacing it with a correctly working one fixes the error but the printer might not register it fully. (Please don't ask what that means, I am explaining it as best as I can from what I understood.) We did a special printer reset which involved a power cycle while long-holding a button on the screen, pressing another a couple of times, and waving pixie dust (I may have made up the pixie dust part) which caused a long printer reboot. Then we also had to re-set the drum counter (which was messed up owing to the faulty drum). Anyway, after that all the documents that didn't print, once again printed correctly. (I saved them all.)

So my problem is now fixed. 😁

I want to thank everyone for their patient answers. You guys really are great! Sometimes hardware goes wonky and you go "well it works with everything else" (which was true) but maybe there are other things that don't work that you don't use or don't use often. So there were some additional factors I didn't consider because they just didn't seem relevant.

🏆️ ← you all get a trophy for doing a great job

John_in_NC

Thanks for the update, and well wishes for a speedy recovery from the pneumonia. I am glad you got this resolved.

jacobs

Wow, so sorry to hear of your medical problems. I hope you're well along the path to recovery.