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TECH TIP

Beating Those Wireless Printer Woes

If you can’t get your printer on the network, you may be able to get assistance without waiting for a human to come to the phone.

Q. I cannot even get my Canon printer on my wireless network in the first place so I can register it or print anything with a Chromebook. Where do I start?

A. Canon makes a large number of different printers, and the wireless setup steps will vary based on the model you have. If you cannot reach anybody on the company’s telephone support lines to walk you through the process, check the technical support area of Canon’s printers site for instructional videos or browse the page devoted to wireless printing. The Canon video library has clips that guide you through the wireless setup for several printers, and you may be able to find one for your specific model. In some cases, you may need a smartphone or a computer to help get the printer on the network.

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If you are having trouble getting your printer on your wireless network, the support area of the manufacturer's website may have instructions and helpful how-to videos.Credit...The New York Times

You can also find written guides for dozens of models on the Support for Printers page on the Canon site. The page is organized by model number and the guides have a separate section devoted to wireless setup for the printers that offer Wi-Fi connectivity. Check your wireless network setup as well and make sure you are using the correct password when trying to get the printer to join.

Google’s Chromebook computers usually work the easiest with “cloud-ready” printers, and Canon has a guide for setting up the Google Cloud Print service on compatible models. If you do not have a cloud-ready Canon printer model — but it still has wireless connectivity — you may be able to print from a Chromebook by adding the printer to the Cloud Print site with a PC or Mac laptop.

Other options include manually adding the printer to your Chromebook by entering its network address and other information, finagling the Chromebook to work with a networked printer or using a Chrome browser extension to get the software to talk to the hardware so you can print.


Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to techtip@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

J.D. Biersdorfer has been answering technology questions — in print, on the web, in audio and in video — since 1998. She also writes the Sunday Book Review’s “Applied Reading” column on ebooks and literary apps, among other things. More about J. D. Biersdorfer

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