In some cases print jobs may not have a preview image available. This can be for two possible reasons:
Archiving was disabled
Archiving may be disabled / overridden in the following ways:
Printer-level override (disable archiving for a printer)
User-level override (disable archiving for a user)
Print scripting (archiving disabled per-job from within a script)
A preview could not be produced for the archived job
There are several reasons why image previews could not be produced:
The print driver is using a proprietary or GDI / unsupported print language (see the section called “GDI Printers (GDI Print Description Language)”).
The print driver may be using vendor-specific language extensions (see the section called “There may be issues viewing some print jobs”).
A component to convert the PDL / spool file into images may be missing (see the section called “Step 1: Install print spool file viewer technology”).
The archived PDL / spool file may be corrupt or partially copied.
The conversion software (e.g. Ghostscript) may not be capable of producing a preview (e.g. for a complicated document).
In this case, the PDL / spool file for the job may still be downloaded for reprinting (see the section called “Downloading PDL / spool files for reprinting”).
GDI printers produce spool files which are proprietary binary format files and currently there is no standard technology or tools to allow the visual display of printed content, however it is possible to reprint GDI print jobs by downloading the spool file (see the section called “Downloading PDL / spool files for reprinting”). PaperCut Software hopes to approach printer vendors in the future to address this limitation.
Because of its flexibility some PostScript drivers can create spool files that cannot be rendered with the standard viewer. If you find a consistent issue with a particular printer, please first see if there is an alternate driver format available (i.e.. another PDL language). If the issue persists after trying other drivers, please contact PaperCut support. We may be able to address the issue in a future release.
Because of the level of fidelity used in modern copiers archiving off-the-glass jobs would consume large amounts of network bandwidth and disk storage. It would also be currently difficult to provide a cross platform solution that could work consistently with all of PaperCut's supported platforms and devices. The PaperCut development team is currently looking at options which will allow us to offer functionality in this area as well as archiving options for fax and scan jobs.
Depending on the print driver used, certain attributes of preview images generated may differ slightly from those of the actual document (e.g. in some cases a color print-job may have a black-and-white preview image). This is also the case when using conversion filters.
Document watermarks applied by PaperCut's watermarking feature will not display in preview images.
New printers and print drivers are being released every week. For the most up to date information as well as a detailed explanation of known issues, please see this article in the PaperCut Software knowledge base: Known Issues with Print Archiving