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Printing Barcodes - 11/10/2019 4:58:58 PM

Hanson

Posts: 7
Joined: 1/18/2016
Status: offline

I do not own a Dymo label printer. I have always used the PRINT LABELS to generate CSV files and use a mail merge. It is tedious but it has always worked. Besides, I have my merge document setup to print nice little tags to hang around the necks of my bottle with easy to see vintage, wine name, price etc.

However, lately, when I go to print to CSV in this way, I click PRINT 71 Labels, the dialog box disappears but nothing happens. No download starts. nothing. I can try again, and the same 71 wines are still ready to print.

I resorted to exporting a report, then building a spreadsheet manually to combine columns etc. so I can use THAT in my mail merge. It is a pain, but it works.

Today, I went through the exercise and I realized that it still thinks the previous 71 bottles have not been printed. Makes sense since I have to do an export list.

SO, two questions: 1. What's wrong with the regular CSV print (for Avery labels etc)? I noticed the browser console generates a bunch of SSL errors referencing DYMO in the URLs even though I don't have that option selected.

2. Is there a way to delete the "has not been printed" tag?

System specs: Using a Mac running OSX High Sierra, browser is latest Safari, but this fails the same way in Chrome too. It seems like a popup blocker, but that is not it, as I have looked for that.

Post #: 1

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/10/2019 5:22:50 PM

Eric

Posts: 17322
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
Status: offline

Successfully generating the CSV marks the bottles as printed.

We will take a look to see if we can reproduce the error, although we are not hearing about issues from anyone else.

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(in reply to Hanson)

Post #: 2

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/10/2019 7:38:38 PM

Hanson

Posts: 7
Joined: 1/18/2016
Status: offline

Thanks for looking. It does not actually generate an error. This was just observed in the console logs. In any case, when I click to print I don’t get a csv download like I used to—the dialog box just disappears. That would explain why it never marks as printed.

(in reply to Eric)

Post #: 3

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/11/2019 1:43:58 PM

dpolivy

Posts: 1787
Joined: 4/20/2012
Status: offline

The console errors are "normal" for the DYMO library as it tries to locate the DYMO Web Service. If you don't have it installed, it won't find it and will produce errors.

I looked through this a bit, and am not able to reproduce it on a Mac with a similar configuration. Do you happen to have any ad-blocker or script blocking plugins installed? I can potentially see a scenario where this would cause the issue you're describing. A simple fix would be to disable the blocking plugin for cellartracker.com.

Dan

(in reply to Hanson)

Post #: 4

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/11/2019 2:47:11 PM

Hanson

Posts: 7
Joined: 1/18/2016
Status: offline

Interesting question. I do have a DNS-enabled ad blocker—“pi-hole” on my network blocks DNS lookup requests for ad/tracking. I will do a test with that disables tonight and see if it makes a difference. If so, I do apologize for the inconvenience.

(in reply to dpolivy)

Post #: 5

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/11/2019 2:53:19 PM

dpolivy

Posts: 1787
Joined: 4/20/2012
Status: offline

I do think that could cause it, but let me know how the testing goes. The short explanation here is that the print dialog is trying to report to Google Analytics that we did a CSV print (the metrics on CSV vs DYMO are useful to us to determine feature usage), and waits until it confirms it was reported or 2 seconds pass. However, if the Google Analytics script is never loaded (as I suspect Pi-Hole may prevent), it looks like that timer never gets kicked off, so it doesn't download the file or mark them as printed. You might also see a script error in the output about 'ga' being undefined.

I can certainly fix this so failure to load Google Analytics doesn't cause this problem, but I've got a bunch of things in the air at the moment so it will take me a while before I can get to it.

Dan

(in reply to Hanson)

Post #: 6

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/11/2019 7:09:46 PM

Hanson

Posts: 7
Joined: 1/18/2016
Status: offline

Dan,

Thanks for the help. Testing proves that the Pi-Hole DNS ad/tracking blocker was causing my problem. Sorry to bother!

Actually, this may help others who run into similar situations since people are becoming more aware ad/tracking and may be blocking:

The Raspberry Pi based "Pi-Hole" which runs on a tiny $35 computer running linux, works extremely well and does not affect browsing performance, but as we just found out, it stops communication between the user computer and Google analytics. Many websites (most?) leverage Google Analytics in order to gain user insights which help improve the website, optimize performance and so on. In this particular case, as Dan describes, the site itself is designed to check successful communication with GA before proceeding. By logging into the Pi-Hole admin, I was able to suspend blocking for 30 seconds which was enough time to test the label printing. In my case, the CSV download worked immediately.

Dan, if you are willing add your adjustment to your backlog I would appreciate it. I'd like to keep my ad/tracking blocker running. No rush, as I know how to work around the problem now. Thanks so much!

--Randy

(in reply to dpolivy)

Post #: 7

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/19/2019 10:31:11 AM

dpolivy

Posts: 1787
Joined: 4/20/2012
Status: offline

I've pushed out an update that should fix this -- please give it a try and let me know if you still have issues with the Pi-Hole enabled.

Dan

(in reply to Hanson)

Post #: 8

RE: Printing Barcodes - 11/24/2019 1:21:41 AM

Hanson

Posts: 7
Joined: 1/18/2016
Status: offline

Picked up some new wine today. Added and tried to print via CSV export and it looks like it worked fine. Could be that the DNS is still cached from disabling the ad blocker last time, but as far as a test goes right now, it is working. Thanks!

(in reply to dpolivy)

Post #: 9