OneNote Printer Troubleshooting Tips

I've been working quite a bit recently on the OneNote Printer.  I had a bug reported with my automation script (I was checking to see if the printout had been inserted much too soon – the fix was to wait until the printout was imported correctly), looking into some other automation problems and had been putting together a quick "how to" for folks that get the OneNote printer set to be the default.

It turns out that Michael Oldenburg beat me to the punch.  He put up a really good guide for what to do if the ON printer winds up as the default and how to fix this.  It's here: https://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/archive/2011/04/25/is-microsoft-onenote-hijacking-your-print-jobs.aspx .  If you haven't read through this and are interested, please jump over and check it out.  There is a lot of good background information there, screenshots for how to change the default printer and some reasons why this could be happening.

Thanks a lot, Michael!  Saved me a bunch of time.

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 13, 2011
  Any progress on this bug - I have convinced my staff (50+)  that OneNote is the solution to working collaboratively and then we upgraded to 2010. Many are thinking of going back to 2007 because of this issue. I'm not sure you understand the importance of the Prinout function! It was one of the things that make Onenote a standout feature. Thanks for trying.

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2011
  Michael's summary has the latest information.  If you are seeing different behavior feel free to email me with details via the link at the upper right.

• Anonymous
  June 06, 2011
  Mine keeps changing the default printer back to onenotes. My printer is a 1 year old HP Photosmart wireless used by 2 laptops and it was there first. I'm a little annoyed at Microsoft for this hyjack

• Anonymous
  June 06, 2011
  Skotyman - can you send me an email via the "Contact" link at the upper right?  I've heard some scattered reports of this and want to get to the bottom of it.

• Anonymous
  October 13, 2011
  I just got a new computer with Windows 7 and MS Office 10.  OneNote is hijacking my print jobs.  My Canon Mx330 is set as the default printer.  Mt printer default says the the model is:  Send to OneNote Printer.  What do I do now?  Any help would be great.  Thanks

• Anonymous
  October 13, 2011
  If you right click the Canon printer, can you set it as default (it should be an option on the menu)?

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2012
  Can anyone help me with Canon MP560 printer troubleshooting

• Anonymous
  July 01, 2013
  Experiencing the same issue here, our Director's computer is having this issue and it's quickly becoming political. On every reboot Onenote is taking control of printing taking default status away from the Fuji Xerox printers we have installed. We have reset to default printing many times as well as gone into the registry and deleted all printers installed on the system. This issue keeps occuring. Even after deleting onenote printer form the system it is defaulting to the XPS printer. It appears to be an issue with the windows Printer subsystem not just OneNote.

• Anonymous
  July 07, 2013
  Have you contacted the Windows folks?  You can ask in their forum here: answers.microsoft.com/.../windows_7-hardware

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2015
  yes i think we all know how to change a default printer...  the issue is that it happens on every reboot. for me i am using printer preferences to set the printers... on 98% of users it works perfectly on 2% (predominantly the executives of course) it keeps reverting to one note after every reboot.

• Anonymous
  August 18, 2015
  I agree with Kelly, Oldenburg's entry is useless, it  is not even to the point.  It is changing on every login for me, and it is happening late in the login process.  I have set a login script to change it to the correct printer by OU, and it is changing it to One-Note after the login script runs.