Advanced Office Blog

What is Your Copier Telling You?

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:55:13 GMT

Those “Little” Messages on Your Copier! They’re Trying to Help You.

To Replace or Not to Replace, That is the Question

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 21:09:34 GMT

When Should Toner Cartridges Be Replaced?

If you’ve ever seen your copier flash “Toner Low”, you know the panic that hits you. The bead of sweat that gathers at your temple as you wonder how many more pages could you squeeze out before the machines – and your operation – comes to a grinding halt. Your first instinct is probably, “Now! I better replace it now before the prints start looking bad, or I’m in the middle of a print job and it just stops!” But here’s the truth: that alert is just a warning, it is just the machine’s way of giving you ample time to prepare by saying “time to check your backup supply.”

Electronic Signatures – Keeping up in a Modern World

Advanced Office — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 17:30:00 GMT

In a world where standards and expectations for doing business are rapidly increasing, many businesses are prioritizing digital transformation and turning to software solutions to help modernize and keep up with their competition.

MPS Revisited: What's Changed?

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 15:36:40 GMT

Let's go all they back to June, 2019; do you remember what that world was like? We're talking about pre-COVID, pre-flexible work from home, AI was just a science fiction trope and Britain was still part of the EU. Yeah, that's how much has changed in such a short time. In June of 2019, we also wrote about the power of Managed Print Solutions (MPS) to streamline workflows, outlining how to reduce costs, and make office life a little less frustrating. But, much like the world around us, the Managed Print Solution has also changed since we last looked at it. So, here we go, let's fast forward to 2025—and not only is MPS still relevant, unlike Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash Player, but it’s also arguably more essential now than ever.

Should You Purchase A New Copier Before the End of the Year?

kkopp@goadvanced.com (Kyle Kopp) — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 15:50:12 GMT

The short answer, is yes. Before you jump the gun and celebrate the New Year, you should be aware that by holding off to purchase new equipment in the new year, you may be missing out on thousands of dollars in savings. If you’re not familiar with Section 179 of the US Tax Code, this decision could result in significant loss.

How to Fix Unwanted Lines on Copies and Scans

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 17:43:28 GMT

Are you experiencing lines appearing on your scanned or copied documents when using the document feeder on your device? You're not alone, and this can happen to any device from time to time. This issue is most commonly caused by dust, whiteout, or pen marks on the slit glass that are picked up off of the original document when it’s being scanned. The slit glass is a small strip of glass, about 1 inch in width, adjacent to the larger platen glass under the document feeder or platen cover on top of your device.

How to Troubleshoot a Fax Line

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 16:26:28 GMT

You know the feeling; standing in the copy room, staring at the device in front of you, waiting for that fax to come through that your customer or associate assures you they are sending right that moment. There's sensitive information in the document that you don't want the general office population to see, or it's a rush situation that you just can't wait any longer for the information to come through. But the display just stares at you blankly, lazily indifferent to your heightened anxiety levels and building perspiration. Or equally maddening is a situation where you're trying to send a fax out. But time and time again you receive a print out confirmation that your message has once again failed to go through. So what do you do now?

Well, first and foremost is to test that your fax number itself is actually working. Just like your telephone line, your fax number needs to be valid and connected for the information to travel through to its destination. You can test and confirm your fax number is working with these few quick steps:

Call your fax number (including area code) from your mobile or a landline. You should hear a fax tone immediately. If there is no fax tone humming back through the reciever or you hear a recorded message that the line is out of order, then you know it is the line and not the equipment.
- Next step is to call your telecom support team to understand why that line has been disconnected from your services.

If you do receive a fax tone and are still unable to send or receive a fax, check the connection with these steps:

Consult your "Communication Result Report" that generates after the failed attempt.
- - This report will generate on all failures, even if the report has been disabled in the settings for successful transmission confirmations. You should see one of the following explanations for the failure:
- "Hang Up Or Line Fail"
  - A communication was interrupted because of a fax malfunction or telephone line noise problem.
- "Busy"
  - The recipient's line is busy.
- "No Answer"
  - The recipient did not answer the call.
    - This means there is an error with the recipients line
      - Possibilities include a disconnected number on their end or a device that is turned off and unable to recieve
- "No Facsimile Connection"
  - The recipient answered the call, but the fax communication failed.
    - Possibilities include a telephone line instead of a fax line as the number on the destination. Confirm with your recipient that you have the correct number.
  - "Exceed Max. Email Size"
    - An Internet fax transmission was interrupted because the machine's maximum mail size problem.
      - You may have too much data currently utilized by other outgoing messages
        
        Try again once your device has finished sending any previous fax jobs

If your receiving a different result, or no report at all, confirm the physical fax line is securely plugged into both the wall jack and the “LIN” port on your device.
- Press the "On Hook Button". If you don’t hear anything after touching the On Hook button, go to the back or side of the machine and make sure the phone cord is plugged into the “Lin” Port. Go back to the On Hook Button again and you should hear a phone tone.
  - Some fax options have line ports numerically labeled (LINE 1, LINE 2, LINE 3).. Connect the first line to LINE 1, and any extra lines in numerical order.

If a transmission is successful, "OK" is displayed on both your display screen of the device and the confirmation report, if enabled in your settings.

If you don't have someone handy who you can fax and receive a fax from to test, there are various services that can help. HP, the printer and fax machine manufacturer, offers a free hotline at 1-888-HPFaxMe.

After troubleshooting, if you are still unable to send or receive a fax, please email or call Advanced Office at 877-547-9500, or see our visit our customer center for more options to connect with your service team.

While fax usage has decreased over the last decade as e-mail and other communication avenues have risen in preference, the importance of those documents that are faxed has actually risen as well. If a document needs to run via fax, it is often due to very sensitive or timely information contained with in the document, so we understand that stress that can come from dealing with a non-responsive fax machine. Hopefully, these steps help you to a quick resolution and your communication from here on out is seamless.

Take the Paper out of Paper Jam

kkopp@goadvanced.com (Kyle Kopp) — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 15:47:12 GMT

You know that experience. You’re zipping along, making great time and everything is going smoothly when, out of nowhere, everything comes to a grinding halt. That’s right, it’s a paper jam in the copier. This can be one of the most frustrating experiences with your copier or multifunction device because it makes no sense. Why, all of a sudden, did the paper get stuck?! Of the more than 16,000 service calls we took last year, almost 20% involved a paper jam in the device, so you’re not alone with this struggle. But before you start calling the tech or cursing the manufacturer, understanding what causes a paper jam might help you avoid many of these situations in the future.

What is a Waste Toner Bottle?

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 15:04:10 GMT

We talk a lot about toner and toner levels. This is because many of us are used to watching our level of toner drop and experiencing that panic because we don't know how many prints are left until empty. We dig through our cabinets to make sure we have a spare on hand or we stare at the tracking page of the designated shipping carrier desperatly willing our package to arrive quicker so we can stave off our "foro" (fear of running out). But toner isn't the only consumable item in your MFP that can cause a stop in printing. Let's talk a bit today about Waste Toner Bottles.

If this is a new term for you, a Waste Toner Bottle or Cartridge is a replaceable item in many devices that collects residual toner that remains on the equipment’s drum. This is a good spot to explain a little how toner works in a copier or MFP. The process of creating an image in these devices uses statically charged ions to stick charged toner particles equally charged paper in the pattern designated by the copier. Then, using what's called a fusing unit, plastics in the toner particles are melted and the toner is fused to the paper. A very basic way of explaining this is like in grade school when you would lay down a pattern with white glue on construction paper, then sprinkle glitter over the service and the the sparkly pieces would stick to the paper in the pattern of the glue. Just like in that process, however, something has to be done with the toner particles that were not fused in the charged pattern laid out. For black and white machines, this was easily taken care of in the past few years. The black toner that is not used is moved back into the device's hopper and available for use on the next go around. This was a great advancement in waste reduction as it allowed all of the toner in the cartridge to be used and none of it wasted. The color machines, however, have proved trickier. You see, once all of the color toners have been intermingled in the image creation process, they can't be sorted back out into their four main colors again (Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow). It would be a bit like pouring four types of dye into a bucket of water and then hoping to split them back up again. In these cases, the toner that is not used in the image has to be dealt with. Residual toner that accumulates can cause issues in the device, so the waste toner bottle collects the residual toner all together in one place. Once full it will need to be replaced or emptied.

So when do you need to take care of these cartridges? All devices that utilize a waste toner bottle or cartridge will flash an indication light "Replace Waste Toner Bottle" on the display when they are at capacity. Unfortunately, these are very basic collection bottles and do not contain any sort of microchips or methods of gauging current levels in their storage areas, so you only get a notice when the bottle has become full.

Often times you can still manage to use the machine for a short while afterwards, but once a collection unit is at capacity, it will stop the usage of the machine as there is no longer anywhere for the toner waste byproduct to be stored during the imaging process. For this reason we strongly suggest having a Waste Toner Bottle spare on hand.

Most of the time, in a non-pressing situation - we will actually deploy a technician to empty the bottles and in order to reduce the amount of plastic waste being discarded. Unlike toner and ink cartridges, the waste toner bottles cannot be recycled or reused, as they are filled up with the used toner element. Emptying the bottles allows us to remove a small part of the waste element from the process by reusing the waste cartridges as many times as possible. Please note, emptying the Waste Toner Bottle should only be done by a qualified technician with the proper tools. Toner is a solid element, but made up of very fine particles. Its quality is very similar to baby powder and as such can easily find its way out of containment and completely coating everything in your office, including clothes, carpets and even the office dog. Once it's found it's way into a cloth surface, it can be very complicated to get back out.

Replacing a cartridge, however, is much easier to do on your own. To replace the Waste Toner Bottle locate the access door. Behind the door you will find the Waste Toner Bottle situated under the toner cartridges themselves.

Carefully pull out the waste toner bottle horizontally. Use the Cap which is attached to the new waste Toner Bottle to seal the contents of the filled on and discard. Insert new waste toner bottle carefully and shut the access door.

In the video below, you can see an example of replacing a toner cartridge by one of our Field Service Supervisors:

Bottles and cartridges can very from make and model, but here are some samples of what Waste Toner Bottles look like.

Ricoh Waste Toner Bottle

Kyocera Waste Toner Bottle

Canon Waste Toner Bottle

How to Check and Report Copier and Printer Meters

Wendy Sue Hawkins — Tue, 23 May 2023 16:15:00 GMT

You know the drill; it's the beginning of the month and you're getting calls and e-mails that it's time for you to report the current meter reads on your MFP, copier or printer on a maintenance contract.

The first question is often "why".

Why is the meter read necessary to report?

Well, this all comes down to the maintenance agreement that's covering the device. Most customers who acquire equipment from us also opt to enroll in a congruent Maintenance Agreement. This plan is what provides those inks and toners you put into the machine as well as the technician that comes out to service it when it goes down. All of these services are at no cost because they are covered as part of that maintenance agreement, and that maintenance agreement bills directly off the reported usage which is driven by, you guessed it, the meter reading.

So now you understand why it's so important for the meters to be reported regularly and on time. Now the question is "how".

How do you check your meter reading and report it properly?

As with most things in the copier and printer world, every machine does this a little differently. But let's walk through he most common processes for our manufacturing partners as these will help you in 95% of your experiences.

1. Press User Tools or Settings (This may be a physical button on the far left\ right or a touchscreen button)
2. Select "Counter"
3. B/W total will show on screen. For color machines, arrow down to view totals for color & B/W.

(two types of control panels)

1. Press either ‘counter check’ button on the side of control panel ‘123’ button depending on model
2. On display Line 109 equals Black and White read, Line 106 equals Color
3. Select ‘print list’ from the LCD display to get a printed report

(two types of control panels)

1. Press the ‘MENU’ button
2. Select ‘REPORTS’ from the screen
3. Press ‘PRINT REPORTS’
4. Press ‘PRINT STATUS PAGE’

alternatively

1. Press the ‘MENU’ button
2. Press ‘OK’
3. Use the down arrow to highlight ‘Status Page’
4. Select ‘YES’ to Print Out

Once you've recorded your meters, you can can send these along with equipment ID number or serial (so that we can match) to meters@goadvanced.com

This also a good time to talk about how we can automate your meter reads, so you don't ever have to worry about them. Ask our contracts team to learn more about installing a Data Collection Agent (DCA) to pull these reads automatically whenever needed.