Public Printing

PawPrint is Columbia University’s student and faculty printing system on the Morningside campus.

PawPrint

PawPrint provides students with a simple and flexible way to print in many locations around the Morningside campus. PawPrint conserves paper by defaulting to double-sided printing, and the two-step submit-and-release system allows you to think twice before printing.

The most convenient way to print is to install the PawPrint print driver on your personal computer or laptop.

Benefits and Features of PawPrint

FAQ

Bitdefender, and other antivirus software, block LPD (Line Printer Daemon) traffic.

To enable a computer with Bitdefender to communicate with PawPrint, follow these firewall troubleshooting steps on Bitdefender's website

The Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) partnered with CUIT in the Fall 2018 semester to pilot a semesterly quota. The goal of the pilot was to enable students to access their quota in full throughout the entire semester, instead of on a weekly basis, to accommodate those that have larger printing needs at the beginning and end of the semesters. Throughout the pilot, CUIT gathered feedback from students, resulting in an increase to the semesterly quota in 2019. Before the Spring 2021 semester, CUIT met with the CCSC and it was agreed that the pilot was a better way to meet students' printing needs. In Spring 2021, the semesterly quota pilot was made permanent for Columbia College, and was extended to the undergraduate students of SEAS, the School of General Studies and Barnard College. Please see our Printing Quota Allotments section for complete details on your quota.

In response to the pandemic, all keyboards and computer mice at the PawPrint release stations have been replace with touch-free badge readers for authentication.

**Please note** With touch-free printing, ALL of the print job in your queue will print as soon as you tap your CUID on the badge reader. 

You can manage your print jobs from any computer or mobile device using the PawPrint Center to avoid unwanted charges into your print quota.

If you just got a new or replacement CUID today, you should not expect to be able to use it until tomorrow, when your new ID numbers become synced in the system.

With touch-less printing, all pending print jobs are released as soon as you tap your CUID. To avoid unwanted charges/use of your printing quota, you should manage (delete) your print jobs before tapping your CUID:

Faculty and staff can use PawPrint by purchasing Printing Dollars. In some cases, faculty are provided with a Printing Quota by their school, which can be used to print with PawPrint.

PDF documents especially scanned books, are often formatted in custom-sized paper and fail to print.

Use Adobe Acrobat Reader to submit the document.

  1. Open the Print dialog.
  2. In the Paper Sizing & Handling section, deselect Choose paper source by PDF page size and Use custom size when needed checkboxes.
  3. Check the box for Fit, Actual size, Shrink oversized pages, or Custom Scale depending on your print job.
  4. Click Print.

Anytime a computer with macOS is upgraded to a major release, part of that upgrade clears out third-party installations. Please go to https://cuit.columbia.edu/pawprint/drivers, re-download the drivers and re-install them.

PawPrint supports the standard US paper size: Letter (8.5 x 11 inches).

Improperly formatted print jobs uploaded to the PawPrint Center will fail to print. You will receive an error message.

Error message about custom paper size

Change the paper size from within the document, save it and use the PawPrint driver to submit your document.

Yes. Print jobs can printed from off-campus by using a PawPrint print driver (recommended). You can also upload your document into the PawPrint Center or via the Pharos Print app from off-campus.

When you reach campus, log in to one of the PawPrint stations to print and pick up your document.

Much like printing via the PawPrint Center, you can upload a document to the PawPrint queue with your iOS or Android mobile device with the Pharos Print App. After your document is uploaded, you will need to release it at at PawPrint Station on campus.

Currently PawPrint drivers are not supported on the Chrome operating system. However, ChromeOS users can easily upload print jobs to the PawPrint Center using a web browser. Please note: Google Documents cannot be uploaded to PawPrint. They will need to saved as a supported file type, such as Microsoft Word or PDF.

Currently, PawPrint drivers are not supported on the Linux platform. However, Linux users can easily upload print jobs to the PawPrint Center using a web browser.

CUIT weekly quotas reset between Saturday night and Sunday morning; specifically on every Sunday at 12:10am, just after midnight.

Semesterly quotas reset on the first day of each semester.

While emails can be printed with PawPrint in the same way as any other document, PawPrint does not currently support printing by emailing a document to a printing address. Documents may be printed by uploading to the PawPrint Center from your computer or mobile device, or using the PawPrint printer driver from an open application. Detailed instructions are available on the PawPrint Quick Start page.

Color printing is available at several locations. To print in color, you must use the PawPrint color print driver.

Yes. After you upload the document to the PawPrint Center, you can change the range of pages to be printed, pages per side, and amount of copies, in the Print Options section.

Printing multiple pages (up to 16) on a single side of a sheet is possible in PawPrint, but requires that you print using the PawPrint driver, rather than upload the document to the PawPrint Center. By using the driver, you will have access to a multitude of printing options that are not available using the PawPrint Center. For instructions on printing with the PawPrint driver, visit the PawPrint Quick Start Guide.

If your print job fails to complete successfully, due to an issue with the PawPrint system, PawPrint will automatically identify the job as failed and mark the job as a "Free Print" in the PawPrint Center as well as on the PawPrint station screen. You can then print the job within 8 hours of the print failure from any other PawPrint station without incurring additional charges against your Quota or Printing Dollars.

If your job fails because of a printer-specific issue, such as a printer jam, PawPrint will not automatically credit you for a free print. In these cases, you will need to speak to a Computer Lab representative (or call the CUIT Service Desk) who can assist you and credit your account if applicable.

Once purchased, Printing Dollars are non-refundable. In certain cases of printer malfunction, account credit may be applied after speaking with a Computer Lab representative. To receive a refund, you must physically bring all substandard printed sheets to the attention of a CUIT staff member at any of the following locations:

  • 213 Butler
  • 251 Engineering Terrace
  • 251 Mudd
  • 323 International Affairs Building
  • 215 Lehman Library
  • 202 Philosophy

When you upload a PDF to PawPrint Center, some web browsers use their own PDF renderers, rather than Adobe's, resulting in printing issues with PDFs that are incompatible to PawPrint. Google’s Chrome is a good example of a widely-used browser that uses a non-Adobe PDF renderer.

Opening the PDF document on your computer and printing using the PawPrint driver is the safest way to avoid this issue.

You can add money to your account via the “Add Funds” link within the PawPrint Center.

You have 8 hours to print after sending a document to PawPrint.

No. After you print a document, it will no longer be available in your print queue. If you want to print the document again, you will need to submit the print job again.

If your print job fails or cannot be printed because of a printer jam, toner issue, or other problem with the printer itself, please submit a ticket.

PawPrint is available for Columbia's students, faculty, staff and affiliates as a 24/7 service. To maintain such a high service availability and standards, our system is updated regularly on the 4th Sunday of every month at 2AM. This service window does create a brief unavailability of the PawPrint service and is typically restored within minutes. If you've experienced a prolonged unavailability of the service, please review the CUIT Service Alert site for further information.

It depends on the type of systems you are using to print from your Mac:

  1. For those who encounter this error when printing with Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 + PawPrint Print Driver, you should upload your document to the PawPrint Center instead.
  2. For those who encounter this error when printing a PDF with the Preview application or a browser application + PawPrint Print Driver, you should download Adobe Acrobat DC for Mac and open the PDF and then open the file via Adobe Acrobat and print using the PawPrint Driver.