Problem

Before submitting a print job from Excel, when we select "letter" as the page size for a printer where default page size is "A4" (say ASIAPAC region) and then submit the job then "PJL footers" are not generated. This was confirmed using dfa* file on CEPS server as well as using "print to file" feature.

The same behavior is visible when we select "A4" as the page size for a printer where default page size is "letter" (say AMERICA region) and then submit the job.

The attached file is sample output when we used "print to file" feature.

This behavior is NOT observed when we use MS Word under similar scenario.

We could reproduce the problem with collate as well as non-collate option; so this behavior is not related to collate option of MS Excel.

We have observed this behavior on three different windows machines and three models (9040, 4250 and 4345).

This behavior of Excel was observed during our testing of PJL fix.

Impact on CEPS

1. Since the EOJ command is missing in the print-job; printer will wait for such command till it times out. In this case, the job will get printed but with a delay of approx 2 minutes.
2. If a new job arrives when the printer is waiting for EOJ then the new JOB will become part of the previous JOB. Printer may get garbled while trying to interpret the jobs.
3. If a normal job (without job storage option) arrives when the printer is waiting for EOJ for a "stored job" then the normal job will also get stored on the printer. This is because printer treats the new job as part of previous job.

When we tested the same case in non-CEPS system (i.e. install the printer as local printer) then the above mentioned behavior was not observed.