The short answer
Untick “Use Printer Offline” in the printer’s menu, then restart the Print Spooler service. If it keeps returning, the printer’s IP address is changing — fix that with a DHCP reservation in your router and the problem stops permanently.
Windows decides a printer is offline when it fails to get a response, and it is quick to conclude that and slow to change its mind. The printer is usually perfectly healthy.
The quick clears
Untick Use Printer Offline
Settings, Bluetooth and devices, Printers and scanners, select the printer, Open print queue, then the Printer menu. If Use Printer Offline is ticked, untick it. Windows sometimes sets this itself after a failed job and never unsets it.
Clear the print queue
A stuck job blocks everything behind it and puts the printer into an error state. In the same queue window, cancel all documents. If a job refuses to cancel, the spooler restart below clears it.
Restart the Print Spooler
Press Windows and R, type services.msc, find Print Spooler, right-click and Restart. This resolves a large share of stuck printers in one step. If jobs are jammed, stop the service, delete everything in C:\\Windows\\System32\\spool\\PRINTERS, then start it again.
Print the printer's network configuration page
From the printer’s own menu. It shows the IP address the printer believes it has. Compare that with the address Windows is using in the printer’s Properties, Ports tab. A mismatch is the most common underlying cause.
Give the printer a reserved IP address
In your router’s DHCP settings, assign the printer a fixed address. Then update or recreate the printer port in Windows to match. This is the permanent fix, rather than deleting and re-adding the printer every few weeks.
Remove and re-add the printer
If the port is wrong and editing it is fiddly, removing the printer and adding it again is quicker. Choose the entry with the correct IP rather than a cached one.
Why it keeps coming back
The cycle is almost always the same. The router hands the printer a new address after a lease expires or a power cut. Windows keeps using the old one. The printer becomes “offline”. Someone deletes and re-adds it, which picks up the new address and works — until the address changes again.
A DHCP reservation breaks that cycle for good and takes five minutes.
In the printer’s Properties, Ports tab, select the port and click Configure Port. If SNMP status is enabled, try unticking it. Windows uses SNMP to poll the printer, and some printers and networks respond unreliably, which makes Windows declare a perfectly working printer offline.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my printer go offline when it is switched on?
Windows cannot reach it at the address it has stored, usually because that address changed. The printer is online; Windows is looking in the wrong place.
Why does deleting and re-adding the printer fix it temporarily?
Because re-adding it discovers the current address. It works until the address changes again, which is why a reservation is the real fix.
Should I connect a printer by USB instead?
For a single computer, USB is considerably more reliable and removes this entire class of problem. Wireless makes sense when several devices need to print.
Does restarting the Print Spooler lose my documents?
It clears queued jobs that have not printed, which you resend. It does not affect the printer’s settings or anything saved on your computer.
Untick Use Printer Offline, restart the spooler, then reserve the address. The first two fix today; the third stops it happening again.
