The model and the dpi
Printed on the machine. 200 dpi and 300 dpi are separate drivers and the list shows both — a 300 dpi driver on a 200 dpi printer prints everything at half size.
Zebra printers · installing the ZDesigner driver
Twelve screens between a new printer and a working one.
Until the driver is in, every program tells you the same thing in a different way: a printer list with your printer missing from it. ZebraDesigner shows an empty box, Word shows everything except the Zebra, and nothing you press changes it. Zebra Setup Utilities is what fixes that, and this is the whole of it — our own ZM400, screen by screen, nothing skipped.
Two of the twelve catch people out. The welcome screen tells you not to use this wizard for a USB printer, and the model list offers the same printer twice in two different languages.
You need Zebra Setup Utilities first. It is free, it is the one that carries the driver, and it is a different download from the design program.
Before you start
Three things, and one of them is a number.
The wizard will ask for them in this order, and it will not let you past the point where it needs the address.
01
02
The IP address
For a network printer, the number it answers on. A Zebra industrial machine will print you a configuration label with it, and it is on the front panel on the ones that have a screen.
03
Nothing, if it is USB
Do not use this wizard for USB. Zebra say so on the second screen below. Plug the printer in with the power on and let Windows find it.
Steps 1 and 2
Where it starts, and the warning on the way in.
Why the USB warning is there, and why it is worth obeying. A USB Zebra announces itself to Windows when you plug it in, and Windows matches it to a driver and a port on its own. Drive it through this wizard instead and you can end up with a driver pointed at a USB port that moves the next time the printer is unplugged — a printer that worked yesterday and prints to nothing today.
Steps 3 and 4
Two screens that are just clicks.
Steps 5 and 6
One manufacturer, and your printer listed twice.
Take ZPL unless you know you want EPL. They are two different printer languages and the driver speaks whichever one you pick here. ZPL is what every current Zebra uses and what every label program writes; EPL is the older Eltron language, kept for the desktop machines that were built for it.
The symptom of getting it wrong is not an error. The job goes, the printer takes it, and what comes out is blank, or a page of readable text where the label should be. Nothing says "wrong language" — so people chase the label size, the ribbon and the driver settings for an hour before anybody looks back at this screen.
And match the dpi to the machine. It is printed on the printer. A 300 dpi driver sending to a 200 dpi head puts everything out at half the size you designed.
Step 7
Name it, and tell it where the printer is.
If the printer's address is not in that list, it does not exist yet. The list is every port Windows already knows about, which on a machine that has had printers before is a long and untidy history. Add Port is the next step, and it is the only part of this install where you type something that has to be right.
Step 8
The one that looks like something has gone wrong.
What to actually do. Save your work in anything that prints — an old accounting package, a label program, anything that has been on the machine for years — and then press Next. On a PC that is not printing anything at that moment, there is nothing to lose and nothing to decide.
Steps 9 and 10
Adding the port, which is the only thing you type.
That laser is worth a sentence, because it answers a question people ask. HPColorLaserJetMFPM476dw is in this list, and it is nothing to do with Zebra. A port list is every way out of the PC, not a list of Zebra printers — so seeing a non-Zebra here is normal and means nothing is wrong.
The same laser will never appear in a Zebra label program's printer list, because that list is drivers rather than ports, and it only holds what a ZDesigner driver was installed for. Two lists, two different questions, and this is the one that includes everything.
Steps 11 and 12
Two optional extras, and then it is done.
The design program will not notice on its own. If ZebraDesigner or BarTender was open while you did this, close it and open it again — they read the printer list once, at start-up.
If it still does not print
Four things, in the order they are worth checking.
01
Blank, or a page of text
Go back to step 6. That is EPL against ZPL almost every time, and the printer will not tell you.
02
Everything half size
Wrong dpi. A 300 dpi driver on a 200 dpi machine, or the other way round. Same list, same screen.
03
Nothing happens at all
The job is going somewhere that is not listening. Check the address you typed at step 9, and that the printer is on the same network as the PC.
And the fourth: it is a USB printer and you used this wizard anyway. Take it off with Uninstall Printer at step 3, unplug it, plug it back in with the printer switched on, and let Windows do it.
If you would rather not
We will do it on the phone while you watch.
This is a ten-minute job when it goes well and an afternoon when it does not, and the difference is usually one of the two screens above. If a printer has landed and nobody wants to be the one who installs it, ring us and we will walk through it with you on the machine it has to work on.