Slowdown in printing to Office 365 products from 32-bit Win7 PC's

[JM1]

Hi -- I have the 8400 printer and considering switching from Office 2010 Pro to Office 365.  Any adivce?  Thank you -- Jim

[RobH]

Hi Joe,

I want to thank you for your detailed reply regarding this. Disabling the advanced printing features did not resolve our issue, but disabling bi-directional printing did. I want to just give a little more detail as to the drivers we are using and the results we obtained.

We use the Xerox global print driver PCL5 for all of our printers. When this driver is installed you receive the option of installing either the driver named "Xerox Global Print Driver PCL" or the one named "Xerox GPD PCL5 V3.4.377.6.0" or some other variation on the version number. We have noticed that the performance using the driver named "Xerox Global Print Driver PCL" is far superior than the driver with the version number in its name. We tried each driver on one device, once with bi-directional left on and also with it turned off. For the version-named driver, it took 70 seconds for the print button to become available within MS Office using a very basic Word document. With bi-directional turned off, it took 26 seconds. Using Xerox Global Print Driver PCL the delay was 45 seconds with bi-di on and just 7 seconds with it turned off. I do not know the differences between the two drivers and we have usually used the driver with the version number when installing new printers on our network. I guess we should be using the other one!

Anyway, I just wanted to provide this info if it helps you or anyone else. We can consider this case closed :)

Thanks again,

Rob

[Joe Arseneau · Accepted solution]

Typically it is caused by this highlighted checkbox, just un-check and do Apply>OK

Typically the issue is in Bi-Di, which is much worse in 32bit client - 64bit server connections. Too much SNMP traffic where MS tries to pull from the driver if it can duplex, staple etc etc, this check can help alleviate that and the driver will stay fully functional.

If all else fails try disabling Bi-Di here by selecting OFF>OK

[RobH]

Hello all,

Ever since we upgraded from Office 2007 to Office 365, users of our 32-bit Windows 7 machines have been experiencing massive slowdowns in submitting print jobs. If you're familiar with Office 2013 you'll know that when File > Print is selected within any Office module, a print preview automatically appears whether you like it or not. While it is processing this preview, the print button itself is not available. It is this process which is taking an inordinate amount of time, up to two minutes before the print button is no longer greyed out. On our 64-bit machines it is not a problem at all, it's almost instantly available.

We have almost 100 Xerox Workcentres (mostly models within the 5700, 5900, 7500 and 7800 series) and we are using the latest version of the Xerox Global Print driver, PCL5 version.  We are using Server 2012 to host our printers but we get the same results even if we connect to a printer directly through TCP/IP from the client machine.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? We have an open ticket with Xerox but we're getting the runaround with default answers.