We’ve all seen the movies and TV shows where the person takes out their anger on the printer.

The source of all this anger and frustration often times is the paper jam.

If you’ve worked in an office long enough, you’ve probably experienced one of these. Fixing it requires moving levers and trap doors on a printer, copier or scanner. It’s a nightmare, especially when you have a lot of work to do.

To help you avoid paper jams at your office, follow these tips below. They’ll help you prevent paper jams from occurring at your office.

• Properly Load The Paper: One of the most common causes of paper jams is that the paper was not properly loaded. Make sure the paper is in a perfect stack before loading it into a printer or high volume scanner. This will help to eliminate problems with the paper once it is picked up by the paper feeder in the machine.

• Check For Staples And Paper Clips: This especially is a problem when you are dealing with copy machines and high volume scanners. Often times, someone forgets to remove paper clips or staples. It’s important to remove these items because they can also cause damage to the copier or scanner.

• See If There Are Any Tears: Many times a paper jam will occur because a leaf of paper is torn or tattered. Be sure to check the paper to make sure that there are no tears in it. This is especially important when you’re scanning documents with a high volume scanner.

• Avoid Overfilling Tray: With your printer and scanner, it’s important not to overfill the paper tray. Try to fill it to half or three-fourths capacity. This helps to prevent paper jams from occurring.

• Use The Correct Paper Weight: You want to make sure that you are using the correct paper for your printer or copier. If a paper is too thick or too thin it could cause a paper jam. With thin paper, it could get torn once it goes through the machine. One way to prevent this is by using paper specifically designed for printers and copiers.

• Avoid Mixing Types Of Paper: Mixing different paper weights often times throws off the printer or scanner, which can lead to paper jams. To help prevent this, try to stick to the same type of paper for a single job. For instance, if you’re printing off a 20-page report, you want to use the same type of paper throughout the print job.

• Service, Service, Service: If you want your printer, copier and scanner to continue to operate at a high level, it needs to get serviced. Try to have printers and copiers serviced at least once a year. This will help to prevent and identify any problems that may be on the horizon.

Following these tips will help prevent paper jams. You may even want to post these tips near the printer, copier and scanner, so people remember them.

Most importantly, be sure to get your printers, scanners and copiers serviced. A company that specializes in document scanners and document scanning solutions can often help with this.