Collating results in exponential amount of copies

[Pistle]

Collate printing should be used anytime when you need a number of copies of a multi-page document that is meant to be read sequentially. The more pages in the document and the more copies you need, the more time you can save through collated printing.

[Pistle]

In order to better understand the difference between “collated vs. uncollated”, it’s important to know what “collated” means.

The literal definition of “collated” is: collected and combined (texts, information, or sets of figures) in proper order. When used by a printer, this means that the file has multiple pages that need to printed in the exact order of the file. Uncollated means that the file’s pages will be printed separately.

[DansDadUK]

In my experience (not necessarily limited to Xerox printers & drivers), this 'square quantity' of copies is usually due to a driver fault where the required number of copies is set at both the job-level and at the page-level for each page.

For example, with the X-GPD-5.347.6.0_PCL6_X64 global driver, analysis of the print stream generated when printing a simple NotePad document, specifying 2 copies, collated, in the Print dialogue shows:

Offset         Type                   Sequence          Description
-------------  ---------------------  ----------------  ----------------------------------------------------

0000000000     PCL Parameterised      <Esc>%-12345X     Universal Exit Language (UEL)
               Comment                                  Switch language to PJL
0000000009     PJL Command            @PJL JOB           NAME = "ASCIIControl.txt - Notepad"[0a]
0000000054     PJL Command            @PJL SET           QTY=2[0a]
0000000069     PJL Command            @PJL SET           XEDGETOEDGE=OFF[0a]

. . .
. . .
0000000867     PJL Command            @PJL ENTER         LANGUAGE=PCLXL[0a]
               Comment                                  Switch language to PCLXL

. . .
. . .

0000062509     PCLXL Data Type        0xc1                  uint16
0000062510                Value       0x0200                2
0000062512     PCLXL Attribute        0xf831              PageCopies
0000062514     PCLXL Operator         0x44              EndPage

. . .

[Analysis provided by selecting 'print to file' in the Print dialogue, and analysing the resultant .prn file using the PRN File Analyse tool in the PCL Parapherenalia application, available via http://www.pclparaphernalia.eu ].

I don't think that the operating-system (Windows 8.1 in my case) supplied (PCL6) class driver exhibits the same problem, nor does the global PCL5 class driver.

[Joe Arseneau]

Have you tried using the Global driver instead?

Does it happen with all programs or just Reader/Acrobat?

Please try the global driver if you haven't (remove the current driver first)

Direct link

If it only happens in Reader/ Acrobat, try running an update on it, this would probably be a Host collation issue. There are registry edits to resolve it but we cannot officially support that. If it is a host collation issue you could also confirmn it by sending a small job to be "finished" (Stapled/Folded/Hole punched) and print multiple copies. If they are stapled together it is the Host collation issue

Link to Adobe Knowledgebase

[MSPTestAccount]

Hi Amy.CDN.

Thank you for using the forum.

I have searched the WC 5225/5230 knowledge base and have not found anything that might help with the problem you have described with collation.  My first thought was to uninstall and reinstall the print driver but as you mentioned your IT person did that without any change in the results. 

You may want to search the product knowledge base to see if there is something you might find that I missed.

http://www.support.xerox.com/support/workcentre-5225/support/enus.html

I would recommend that you contact phone support at 1-800-821-2797 for assistance. 

[Amy.CDN]

My IT person has given up.  When printing in windows 7 to our networked Xerox 5230A, if I collate (the default option), the printer spits out an exponential amount of copies.  1 copy = 1.  2 copies = 4. 3 copies =  9.  His solution was to always uncheck collate but sometimes I need the copies to be collated and it is an inconvenience to do it manually and a waste to throw away the extras.  No one else is having this issue.  It started to happen in Quickbooks and now has spread to other applications.  He removed and reinstalled the printer, updated the driver (from Xerox's website) and tried a few other things over my head but it's still happening.  Any ideas?