Stuck or undeletable print jobs

A job that appears to be printing forever, or that will not delete no matter how many times you press cancel, is almost always a stuck job rather than a broken printer. The operating system keeps a record of every job on a queue, and until that queue is cleared no further job will run. The steps below go from a two-click fix to the full service reset, in that order.

Why one job blocks everything behind it

The operating system does not hand work straight to the printer. Every job goes into a queue held by a background service — the print spooler — and only one job is processed at a time, in order.

• If the first job in the queue cannot complete, the ones behind it never start.
• If the printer connection dropped, the spooler is still holding the job and still waiting for it to finish.
• Because the spooler survives applications closing, a frozen job can survive rebooting the application — and sometimes the whole computer.

That last point is why the fix involves the spooler rather than the application.

Windows: four escalating steps

Step 1 — Cancel from the queue window

1. Press Ctrl + P and choose the printer.
2. Click Open print queue.
3. Select all jobs with Ctrl + A, then click Cancel.
4. If the button is greyed out, go to step 2.

Step 2 — Restart the print spooler

This releases any job the system has marked as unfinishable, and it is safe to do at any time.

1. Find Print Spooler in the list.
2. Right-click → Restart. If it is already stopped, choose Start.
3. Reopen the queue. The stuck jobs will usually be gone.

Step 3 — Delete the spool files directly

Use this when restarting the spooler is not enough, which usually means a job record has been corrupted.

1. Open the services list again and stop the Print Spooler. Do not close the window yet.
2. Open File Explorer and paste this path into the address bar:

   Spool folder

   %SystemRoot%\System32\spool\PRINTERS
3. Select every file inside and delete them all. These are temporary job records, not your documents.
4. Return to the services list and start the Print Spooler again.
5. Open the queue and add the printer back if it disappeared from the list.

Step 4 — Check for something re-adding the job

If jobs get stuck repeatedly, something is recreating them. Check these before reinstalling anything:

• Startup programs: print management utilities, document conversion tools and backup software sometimes queue documents at sign-in.
• Duplicate printer entries: two entries pointing at the same physical printer will produce two queues, and jobs sent to the wrong one appear to vanish.
• A second computer or a phone on the network: the same job may have been sent twice, and the second instance blocks the first.
• The printer's own port: if it is set to a port that no longer exists, every job will hang at the same point.

macOS

1. Open System Settings → Printers & Scanners.
2. Select the printer and click Open Print Queue.
3. Select all jobs and click the − button to delete them, or | to pause and ▶ to resume.
4. If the queue will not open, restart the printing system from a terminal:

   Commands

   sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.printnotify.plist sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.printnotify.plist
5. On a stubborn printer, remove it with Remove Printer, restart, and add it again.

After clearing the queue

• Check the port is still correct before sending anything, particularly after a reinstall:

  Check the port

  Devices and Printers → right-click printer → Printer Properties → Ports tab
• Print one test page rather than a whole document.
• If the job reaches the queue and then disappears without printing, the job is being sent somewhere else — check the destination in the print dialog.
• If the job disappears silently every time, note the timestamp and check the printer's own job history on its web page or panel, which often shows whether it ever arrived.

Questions

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