UPS Worldship changing report printer



I really couldn’t find a quick answer to this on this in a quick search. Maybe it’s just me. But, one of the computers that I support has UPS Worldship installed on it. (Version 8.0.16 I think.) They had a printer problem and switched printers. Of course, Windows handled the printer just fine. Worldship printed out labels (this all happened before I got there, but Worldship gives you an opportunity to change the label printer.) Unfortunately reports wouldn’t print. When looking through the setup and attempting to test it simply gave a message that the printer couldn’t be found (the printer could not be found) and nowhere was an option to CHANGE the report printer. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have looked in the “Change label printer” choice, but at the time I didn’t want to run the risk of tinkering with THAT working part. So… here’s what I did.


I made sure Windows had the printer as it’s default… yes. Then I started looking through the Worldship programs and found a diagnostic program. It ran several tests and one of those gave a lot of details on the files that it used. Very good. In this particular install, it was using a number of ini files, including c:\ship\ups\uows\shipuser.ini On looking at this file I found ALL the printer information, label and report printers. I replaced the (windows) name of the old report printer with that of the label printer ( hp deskjet 5550 series ) and saved it. Reopened world ship and it magically was able to print now. (I basically used the name windows has for the printer in the printers and faxes dialog.)

I’m a bit frustrated for a couple of reasons. 1) Why is there not an EASY means within the program to choose a report printer? 2) IF they’re just printing reports, why doesn’t worldship assume the default printer?

The documentation says that worldship will use the label printer for reports if NO report printer is setup. However in THIS instance, the OLD printer was setup as a report printer and I suppose that precluded it falling back. It was looking for a printer that didn’t exist. The only other guess I have is that they might want a reinstall of the software to set the printer straight. (But it shouldn’t require that.) I don’t know, like I said, the “change lable printer” button may have taken me to a complete printer setup dialog, but. It didn’t imply “printer setup” it just implied that clicking on it would change the label printer. I didnt’ want to go there if that was working.

I guess this is in great part a user interface rant, but hopefully that will help someone find a way out of a frustrating problem.

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