So..... seems like this one has been an issue for what 5, 6 years??
Needed a replacement printer/scanner for my trusty old Brother that was on its last legs, picked out another Brother but was convinced by the printer supplier to switch to a Xerox, silly me said yes without doing proper research! Anyway, key thing here is we do a LOT of scanning (which I mentioned of course) so need a trouble free scanner like my old one. Got the printer all set up and then had to spend SEVEN. HOURS. trying to get it to scan over to my desktop - must have watched every tutorial and read every help doc and literally tried every single recommendation and setting change to get it sorted. Anyway, FINALLY managed to figure out how to set up an 'address' that the scanner would send the scans to even though I couldn't simply look on the network (it won't connect, keeps coming up with connection error) for a list of available devices (sigh!) so I thought, well okay then, I'll just set up an address for each of the teams computers/laptops and that'll do the trick...and went home for the weekend.
Come in work this morning and it won't scan will it? another 4 hours of too-ing and fro-ing with the company who sold me the thing and we realise that my computers IP address has changed rendering the address book listing invalid - update the IP address and it works again.
But obviously I can't be checking each computers IP address and updating the address book every day, that would just be silly! However, I can't find an answer to what to do about this.
To be completely honest I'm comparing this to the brother we had where we just installed the drivers on each computer, told the printer which wifi network we're all on and hey presto! press scan and a list of devices on that network comes up to choose from - and I was just kind of expecting, it being 2023 and all, that this was standard and wasn't expecting to need an IT degree and 40 hours available to install the (fill your own gap) thing! The boss is doing his nut, the company we bought it from is pretending that all printers would need the same time and effort to install so no point in swaping it out, and I'm sat here, at nearly 8pm. again. wondering whether to crack open the gin and throw the printer from a first floor window!
So, questions:
1) why is my printer not able to connect to the wireless network and simply 'see' which devices are available to scan to? (its working the other way as everyone is able to print fine!)
2) is there something I can do about our IP addresses changing (change to static for example) and what are the repercussions for other software etc of doing this?
3) why is this STILL a problem in 2023 when I'm finding similar questions (without answers that are helping) back to 2018???
