Using too many printers

With Loftware printer seat-based licensing, the number of printer seats you have on your license determines how many printers you can print to at a time. When you use a printer, it becomes a licensed printer for 7 days. After 7 days of no printing, that printer automatically releases a printer seat. If you exceed the number of your printer seats, Loftware activates a 30-day grace period. The grace period allows you to continue printing when you temporarily exceed the number of printer seats on your license.

Note

The following topics explain how Loftware counts your licensed printers:

In some cases, the same printer might take two or more printer seats:

You unplug your USB printer and plug it into another USB port. This counts as a new port and takes one more printer seat.
You change your port from USB to network, LPT, COM, or some other port.
You install a printer driver from another software manufacturer. In some cases (if you use a very old printer driver), even a driver upgrade can take another printer seat. If your new driver uses a different printer name, Loftware detects it as a new printer.

You can still print your labels if you exceed the number of printer seats, but Loftware shows a warning message.

	Note
	In Cloud Designer and Cloud Essentials, Loftware automatically removes printers from the list after 24 hours of no usage.

Note

You can't manually delete your printers from the list. Printers are automatically removed from the list if you don't use them for 7 days.

To see the list of used printers, open desktop Designer and go to File > Options > Licensed Printers.

You can also reserve your printers to ensure uninterrupted use in the future. Go to File > Options > Licensed Printers and tick the checkboxes in the Reserved column.

Reserved printers stay on the list even after you haven't used them for 7 days. You can always unreserve them in File > Options > Licensed Printers and deselect the checkboxes in the Reserved column.

After the grace period, if the printer usage list contains more printers than license seats, the number of available printers automatically reduces to match the license quota. Active printer seats remain only for the most recently used printers.

If you want to use more printers, upgrade your license. Our sales department can provide you with an upgrade license or a temporary license that you can use until your printers are removed from the list.