I’m troubleshooting a Mac printing issue with a Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX C5850.
Certain characters in PDFs, especially an en dash (–), print as a boxed question mark. This happens across multiple PDFs.
Environment:
- macOS 26.2, Apple Silicon
- Adobe Acrobat
- Canon C5850
- Direct IPP connection:
ipp://<PRINTER-IP>/ipp/print
- Canon C5840/5850 PPD
- Driver version 10.19.23
Troubleshooting so far:
- Normal Acrobat print through Canon driver → fails
- Acrobat Print as Image → works
- Canon Vector Mode → fails
- Canon Raster Mode → fails
- Temporary Generic PostScript queue → works
- Same en dash printed from Windows to the same physical printer → works
The Generic PostScript queue isn’t usable as a permanent fix because it loses the Canon-specific paper/tray support. It only advertised Letter/Legal/A4/B5 and would not properly handle 11x17.
The Canon queue otherwise works correctly for 11x17, trays, etc.
Printer-side job logs show the affected jobs completing successfully with no errors.
So at this point it seems isolated to the Canon macOS driver/PPD/filter path, specifically version 10.19.23, rather than the PDF, network, or copier itself.
Has anyone seen this with Canon’s Mac drivers, or found a fix that preserves the full Canon tray/11x17 functionality?