laserjet empty tray problem

[innirvana1]

Is there a way to make my HP laserjet 4050 to send my computer a warning message when tray 1 or tray 2 goes empty?
Or better yet, make it so that it won't print to the next tray when one is empty.

my problem is that my printer has expensive paper in tray 2 and normal paper in tray 3 and when multiple users print alot, tray 3 goes empty and it starts wasting tray 2 paper.

anybody know of anyway to avoid this from happening? (except relying on users to fill the 3 tray on their own)


thanks!
-jes

[Luke92881]

Isnt there menu options on the printer itself that you can assign paper settings to certain trays?

[innirvana1]

yes there is, but this doesn't really have anything to do with paper settings. There is expensive certificate paper always in tray 2 because we are always printing certs.

but everything else that is just normal printing, prints to tray 3 by default.

but when tray 3 goes empty, it just automatically starts printing to tray 2 (which is our cert paper) and i don't want that to happen.

[jdc2000]

You may need to thoroughly examine the user manual for the printer to see if there is a setting that enables/disables the chaining of the paper trays. Some printers allow you to control this with a user setting, others do not. You might also try e-mailing or calling HP's tech support on this one.

[jerryctx]

If the printer doesn't offer this feature you may be able to control it in the application(s) that generate the print. MS Word, for example, lets you specify the source tray (under File, Page Setup) if the printer has multiple trays.