Dell C2665dnf Color Laser Printer and Mac OS 10.15 - Catalina

Chiming in to add to the voices. We need a 64-bit Catalina-compatible scanner driver for the C2665dnf!

Hey -- I just found a workaround!

1st, plug the C2665dnf into your mac via USB cable. Then on the printer's control panel (the one on the physical printer, not the one on your mac), swipe left to "Scan to PC". Select your scan options there and click "Scan".

On my MacBook, when the printer started scanning, a little box popped up that said "ScanButton Manager". When it was finished, Preview opened with a scan from the printer.

Not ideal, but it works!

One more thing: if you do a spotlight search for ScanButton it will let you open the app where you can set the destination folder of the scans you make this way. 

I don't do a lot of scanning, so I don't know when it stopped working, but the "Scan to PC" workaround above did NOT work today. Sigh.

Fortunately, the "Scan to USB" function on the printer does work, so now I have a USB drive taped to the side of my printer for when I need to scan.

mutter

Hi guys,

I have had these problems with MacOS drivers for my printer, I think for the last 3-4 yrs, was it from 10.13 on?

I talked to the guys from the Dell support team, and they were surprised, that I didn't know, that Dell is not supporting Mac OS drivers any more.

So then I included the MFP in my home net, and this has been working pretty well for the last yrs including scanning function, printing etc. 

Since Catalina 10.15. 64bit, printing works, scanning is . Scanning to USB stick works, and you can transfer it to your Mac. Scanning directly to PC by USB connection  did not work for me, maybe I am too stupid.

I really doubt that Dell will support 64bit drivers for MacOS, our community is basically to small compared to others.

If you have a normal PC with Windows 10 it still works.

Good luck guys, stay well.

Tataaaa, the latest driver update from Aug 19 works with Catalina! Thanks @Dell for maintaining your printers, thumbs up! @guitarplayer69 and @LadySun1969 you might want to give it a try as well....

Cheers

MKL

It works! Thanks for tagging me, @MKLMAILFS !

(I'm still gonna leave my USB drive on my printer, though, just in case it stops working on the next OS upgrade, LOL.)

I upgraded to macOS Big Sur, and it seems to have killed the scanning feature. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?

I am! I guess it's back to the USB thumb drive for me. *sigh* 

Hey y'all - I got it to work!

Here's what I did. I removed my printer from the system & deleted all the print drivers in the Library (I had installed several different things trying to make it work), then restarted the laptop.

I downloaded the Dell C2665dnf driver dated August 2020. Inside that pkg are the printer installer, the scan installer, and the fax installer. When I tried to run the printer installer, Big Sur refused to run it, saying the developer needed to update it. I went to System Preferences>Security & Privacy and said "Open it anyway", then ran it. After that, I did the same thing with the scanner installer. (I don't use fax, so didn't bother with that installer.)

THEN I re-added the printer -- which now shows it using "Bonjour - Multifunction" rather than just "Bonjour" -- and now my laptop sees the scanner & now everything works!

I'm still keeping a USB drive near the printer, just in case!

@FloMonster @MKLMAILFS @guitarplayer69 

@LadySun1969: Thanks for sharing! I did the same, and yes, this results in a Bonjour MFP Printer / Scanner in Big Sure.

But unfortunately I still see the following issue, which leads me to the conclusion, that DELL needs to update the drivers of the C2665dnf to be compatible again with Mac OSx.

I'm using a Software called "PDF Scanner" (Version 1.16.2 (152)) - and using above mentioned drivers from last year the following issue occures:

When doing a scan using the document feeder, the software can trigger the process and the scan of the first page using those drivers. But after scanning the first page, the printer stalls in the stage where it should upload the image to the computer, so it stops there and does not even suceed to upload the first page of the document on the scanner. The second page etc. will not be read by the scanner.

The only workaround I found is to use in this particular software the so called "compability mode", which basically uses the MAC Osx internal tool "Digital Images" instead of the Dell printer / scanner driver discussed before. The problem with that is twofold: 1. the standard settings are taken from the built-in software, which prevents to have specific settings depending on the app which is used (e.g. duplex-b/w-scan with the pdfscanner software, color single page with a imaging software etc.) and 2. this compability mode is not available with every software.

So it looks like there is a working mechanism for Bug Sure with the build-In tools, but DELL really needs to update the drivers to provide again a fully working mode compatible with Big Sure.

B/R

David

Hi, @David W !

I am also using PDF Scanner (Version 1.16.2 (152)), also via network, and did some testing this morning based on your posts.

You are correct that it does not work with Compatibility Mode OFF. But with it ON, I was able to scan single-sided or duplex in both color and BW, multiple pages. 

On my Big Sur M1 Air, I was able to accomplish all the same things with PDF Scanner, with Image Capture, and with the scan function of the Print Q* (that is,  I opened the print Q* & clicked "Scan").

You said: "which basically uses the MAC Osx internal tool "Digital Images" instead of the Dell printer / scanner driver discussed before". But until I installed the Dell printer & scanner drivers from the August 2020 package, my Big Sur M1 did not even acknowledge that there was a scanner at all! (Just a printer.)

So, what specifically were you trying to do that Compatibility Mode ON is not working for you?

*Apparently, the word "Q U E U E" is a bad word now. The forum reply errored out saying "You used a bad word, [Q u e u e], in the body of your post. Please clean up the body before posting." ????

PS. I just tried it with Catalina on my 2015 MacBook Air & with the mode OFF, the same behavior occurred, so it seems to not be a problem specifically with Big Sur.

PSS. I sent a debug note to Felix at PDF Scanner & he replied, saying "In fact, the Compatibility mode already is a fix - for the often buggy und unreliable scanner drivers, because some vendors only test in Image Capture, which does not use all possible driver features." So, based on that, my understanding is that Compatibility Mode doesn't use the basic Image Capture settings, but uses the driver features. What is your understanding?

Cheers -- have a great weekend!
-Michèle 

I forgot to mention, that I'm interfacing with the MFP via network (not USB).

Dear Michèle, @LadySun1969 

thanks for the reply and the exchange - I see we have basically more or less the same setup - perfect.

Before I go into details, I must admit, that I cannot reproduce my problem anymore - so my assumption now is, that your way of install solved the problem also at my side.

What I observed before your workaround was, that e.g. the settings in PDFScanner regarding Simplex/Duplex and Color did not work, it was always using the settings of the "Digital Images" system software. Problem with that was, that when e.g. setting it on single page and color mode for scanning a picture on one day in "Digital Images" resulted on next occasion when using PDFScanner that seetings such as B/W and duplex were overruled.

So with "Compability Mode" in PDFScanner I'm fine now. I have not yet tested many other SW to interface with the scanner, but I think it will work with "digital images".

As you explain, it makes sense that the compability mode of PDFScanner is using the drivers and not simply using digital images.

So thanks for your post, and let's stay in touch

B/R

David