restricting color printing on canon c3220

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  • robr
    • Jul 2025

    #1

    restricting color printing on canon c3220

    i've been providing my son's pre-K school with some free tech support and they asked me if I could restrict color printing on their c3220 because their letterhead is color, and everyone printing is generating color prints. They tried to restrict it at the desktop level (all Macs) but apparently people keep switching it back. They have a leased copier and are apparently only allowed a certain number of color prints per year and went way over in 2009.

    So I set up a department 0000001 pw/1234 that is the only one that has unrestricted color printing. That seems to be working fine. When I print, the Mac pops up a dialog box where you have to enter in a username/pw. If you enter the correct group number/pw, it successfully prints in color.

    Where I ran into trouble was it was my hope that everyone else could skip this dialog box, but it makes you enter SOME user name before you can proceed past. Ok, not that big of a deal really. So my next hope was that if you entered in garbage, your color print would instead just print in black/white. I had set the printer to accept anonymous black/white jobs. However what I'm finding is that rather than print your color document as b&w, it won't print it at all.

    To test, I set up another user ID, 0000002, I restricted all color to 0, all b&w was unrestricted, I printed a one page color doc, and nothing happened. I saw the copier itself briefly flashed a number of documents exceeded message. On the Mac itself, it thought it successfully printed. To test, I bumped up the number of color pages allowed on 0000002, printed, and it worked.

    So my question is, why aren't documents that aren't authorized to print in color being printed in b&w instead? And is there a way to make it behave as such without having to force the person printing to change the output type when printing?

    Thanks!
  • mrfixit51
    Lead Service Technician

    1,000+ Posts
    • Oct 2008
    • 1975

    #2
    Just set up a valid password for b/w printing, as well as your color one you have already created. That is how we do it.
    "Once a King, always a King, but once a Knight is enough!"

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    • robr

      #3
      I did do that, but if I tried to print anything that was color (ie from a browser window), nothing would print.

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      • mrfixit51
        Lead Service Technician

        1,000+ Posts
        • Oct 2008
        • 1975

        #4
        You set up one user ID with b/w capabilities only, it is restricted in the settings, and a color user ID setup to print in color, or auto color. Set up 2 print drivers, one for b/w and one for color on each of the pc's-mac's. That is the solution we have used.
        "Once a King, always a King, but once a Knight is enough!"

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        • robr

          #5
          Ok, so it sounds like there is no process to dumb it down for the user where whether they select color or b&w, it will just print in b&w both ways if they don't enter the proper codes.

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          • charm5496
            Service Manager

            Site Contributor
            1,000+ Posts
            • Apr 2008
            • 2387

            #6
            no the user is actually going to have to be responsible for what they print and how they print it.
            Accidents don't just happen. They must be carelessly planned.

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