Bidirectional Support in the PaperCut Printer with vendor/manufacturer specific drivers

What does the Bidirectional Support do?

The setting, found on the Ports tab when looking at the Printer Properties menu in Windows, controls whether a print driver will communicate with the physical printer to determine the printer’s state and find out details like whether a finishing unit is attached. The exact function will vary depending on the make and model of printer. Some print drivers, like the PaperCut Global PostScript driver don’t use this feature at all so the option is greyed-out.

There are some situations where this setting is helpful, but in our experience, this setting can also have jobs printed out incorrectly, such as a print job that was supposed to come out in color, comes out black & white.

Adding vendor-specific drivers

If you’re looking to add a vendor-specific driver to your PaperCut Printer, you can read about how to change the PaperCut Printer driver.

Incorrect output of a print job due to bidirectional Support vendor-specific drivers

It is recommended to turn off bidirectional support for your printer as the PaperCut Printer is a global queue that points to many printers.

We recommend going to your printer in Printers & Scanners, right-clicking the printer, and clicking Properties. All drivers are different, so it may take some digging around to find the setting.

Still have questions?

Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood. Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our Support Portal for further assistance.

For more information about PaperCut Pocket and Hive, check out the PaperCut Pocket and Hive Help Center.