Getting a Canon Pixma MG5320 printer to use rear tray with Word

I’ve been dealing with this for years and finally found the solution and reason I could never get my Canon Pixma MG5320 printer to use the rear paper tray when printing labels with Word. I always ended up wasting paper and finally just putting the labels in the regular cassette, praying one wouldn’t come off and get jammed in the printer.

Anyways, the reason is, even if you set the Paper Source to Rear Tray, if  Media Type is set to Plain Paper, the printer will still draw from the cassette! The printer is basically saying to itself, “yeah, I know you *think* you want to use the rear tray, but I know the plain paper is really in the cassette, so that’s what I’m using :-P.” The trick is to set the Media Type to something other than Plain Paper.

NOTE: I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that this is the way all Canon printer drivers work so this solution should work for more than just this particular model.

First open the Printer Properties dialog, by clicking the Properties button.

Then change the Media Type. Below I’ve changed it to Other Photo Paper.

The Printer Paper Size should be left alone and Paper Source can be left at Automatically Selected. Yes, you don’t even have to set this to Rear Tray! By default, the printer thinks you have loaded plain paper in the cassette, so when you specify a different Media Type, it “automatically selects” the rear tray. Yay!

Also, don’t forget to change it back when you are done.

You shouldn’t have to change the default Plain Paper setting, but if you are curious, here’s how to change it. From the Maintenance tab, click the Paper Source Settings for Plain Paper button and a dialog will appear allowing you to change the default. (Alternatively, you can change it on the printer itself in its settings menu.)

Well, I’m so happy I finally figured this annoying annual problem. Can’t wait for next year to reap the benefits!