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How a printer is chosen

Most print jobs do not say which printer they want. Yessort works it out, and this is the page that explains why something printed where it did.

The cascade​

Four steps, in order. The first that answers wins.

1. An explicit choice​

If whatever created the job named a printer, that is the printer. Nothing below runs.

2. Routing rules​

Your rules, matched on the site, the document type, and — for courier labels — the carrier and service.

The most specific match wins. A rule for "DPD next-day labels at Manchester" beats one for "DPD labels at Manchester", which beats one for "any shipping label at Manchester". A rule leaving carrier or service blank means any, so it applies more broadly and is outranked by anything narrower.

This is what lets courier labels go to the printer holding that carrier's stock while everything else carries on as normal. See route labels to a specific printer.

3. The site's defaults​

No rule matched, so the site's defaults decide — and there are three, not one.

Courier labels go to the site's shipping-label default.

Product, location and licence-plate labels — item labels — go to the site's thermal-label default. If the site has not set one, they fall back to the site's document default.

Everything else — packing slips, pick lists — goes to the document default.

4. Nothing matched​

The job parks rather than failing. It waits, and prints once a printer becomes resolvable.

The fallback that explains most surprises​

Step 3's middle case is the one nobody guesses.

If your site has no thermal-label default set, product labels do not fail and do not park — they go to your document default, which is very often an A4 laser printer. The result is a page of small labels rendered on a sheet of paper.

It works that way on purpose: sites that printed labels somewhere before a thermal default existed keep printing where they always did, rather than everything stopping. But it means "why is this coming out of the office printer?" almost always has the same answer — no thermal-label default is set for that site.

Loaded stock​

Separately from choosing the printer, Yessort checks whether the stock loaded in it matches what the job needs — the physical labels in the machine and their size.

A mismatch is flagged. It does not change which printer was chosen; it tells you the chosen one is loaded with the wrong thing, which is worth knowing before a roll is wasted.

Working out what happened​

Ask the four questions in order.

  1. Did something name a printer explicitly?
  2. Does a routing rule match this site, document type and — if a courier label — carrier and service?
  3. Which default applies for this document type, and does the site have a thermal-label default?
  4. If nothing answered, the job is parked and waiting.

Set a site's default printers · Route labels to a specific printer · Fix a print that did not appear