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Unable to print using Ctl+P and all attachments recognized as pdf's

  • 8 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by ken33

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Suddenly I cannot print any email attachments using either CTL+P or the Print icon from Gmail. Firefox opens a new tab and gives me the choices of opening or saving the attachment.The File/Print option works fine.

Furthermore, every type of document is recognized as a pdf, MS Office, spreadsheets, etc., all show document type pdf.

Suddenly I cannot print any email attachments using either CTL+P or the Print icon from Gmail. Firefox opens a new tab and gives me the choices of opening or saving the attachment.The File/Print option works fine. Furthermore, every type of document is recognized as a pdf, MS Office, spreadsheets, etc., all show document type pdf.

All Replies (8)

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Hi ken33, how are you opening the attachments in Firefox? When I hover over an attachment in a message, I get various icons:

<center></center>

Clicking the title gives me a preview on top of the message. Clicking the print icon on Google's preview screen gives me a new tab and --

  • PDF attachment - opens the PDF in Firefox's built-in PDF viewer
  • XLSX attachment - Google converts the file to PDF and opens it in Firefox's built-in PDF viewer

-- and launches the print dialog.

I think it'd prefer to download files rather than use the print button (or pressing Ctrl+p, which the Gmail previewer appears to hijack to run its own print code).

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I click on the attachment, which brings up a preview window. Then I click on the Print icon to print it. That invokes my printer dialog. This has worked without issue for as long as I can remember, until very recently. Now, it opens a dialog box asking me if I want to open or save a pdf. See the screenshots. Note that the attachment is an Excel file.

Thanks

Modified by ken33

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Yes, Google is converting the Excel sheet to a PDF and then launching the PDF. In my case, because my Firefox is set to show PDFs in a tab, I don't get a download dialog. It looks like your Firefox is set to open PDFs externally.

Do you prefer to view PDFs in a tab in Firefox? Check out this article: View PDF files using Firefox’s built-in viewer.

But I suspect you might get better results with spreadsheets if you open them in Excel using the download button on the attachment, and print from there.

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Thanks for your reply. But I’m not interested in viewing or downloading or saving the attachment. I simply want to print it. Firefox has very recently stopped recognizing Gmail’s print icon.

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As far as I can tell, that is how the Gmail attachment print button works at the moment. It generates a PDF, and your PDF setting determines whether it can print immediately from Firefox or needs to be downloaded.

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Just tried it on a Windows machine and it works fine (as do Safari and Chrome, of course). Click on the Print icon and it invokes the printer dialog. So I would say it's a bug.

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What is your setting for PDFs on your Mac Firefox? You can check using the steps in the previously referenced article: View PDF files using Firefox’s built-in viewer.

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OK, that was helpful. My settings were "Always Ask" with PDF Expert being the default viewer If I change it to "Preview in Firefox" it opens in a new tab AND opens the print dialog as I want. With "Always Ask", even if I choose to open it in PDF Expert or Preview, I need to take another step to invoke the print dialog.

Thanks for helping to sort it out.