Coupon Printing in Lion

I was having so many coupon printing problems in Mac OS X Lion, but I managed to fix them - this is how.

Printing coupons from your Mac computer is a great way to shave a few bucks off of your weekly budget.

And it was pretty easy to do under Snow Leopard.

But then along came Mac OS X Lion. And if your system was anything like mine - all of those print applications started to just hang.

Luckily, I was able to get mine working again.

Coupon Print Activator

Many coupon sites (like Target.com and CouponNetwork.com) require you to install a little applet program on your computer, called Coupon Print Activator, to actually print the coupons. This applet is a Java based program.

In order to run a Java based program, your operating system needs to have Java.

You see where this is going, right?

Mac OS X Lion does NOT have Java - but Snow Leopard had it built right in.

The good news is that it is easy to download Java for Lion right from the Apple website.

But before you jump right in and install - there were a few extra steps that I had to take to make it possible to get coupon printing in Lion to work.

• First, go to the Apple website and download Java for Lion.
• Shut down all your browsers and any other applications that are based on Java - and perform the installation.
• Now open Java preferences. This is located in your Utilities folder, which is in your Applications folder.
• Near the top of the window there is a line item that says "Enable Applet Plug-In and Web Start Applications" - click the checkbox next to this.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I use Firefox, so I will show the steps using this browser. Restart your browser.
• You are almost done. Now you must make sure that Java is actually turned on.
• In Firefox, go to Tools in the menu bar and select Add Ons from the drop down menu.
• On the left hand side you will see an item called "Plug-Ins". Select this.
• Now on the right hand side make sure that the item called "Java Applet Plug-In" is enabled.
  
  
  
• After all this - your coupons should print. Mine did.
  

Coupons.com

Ok. Now what about coupon printing in Lion from Coupons.com?

Well, this is a different animal entirely.

Uninstall

Following the advice at Living Rich With Coupons - I uninstalled their coupon printing app (the one that I had originally installed under Snow Leopard) using the uninstaller program that came bundled with the installer.

You should find this in your Applications folder, in another folder called "Coupons".

Install

I then restarted my browser and downloaded the supposedly new version of the coupon installer from the Coupons.com website. I followed the instructions for the install, then restarted my browser.

Then, in Firefox, I confirmed that this plug in was also turned on by going to Tools -> Addons. From here I again selected Plugins on the left hand side, and checked to make sure that the Coupons Inc, Coupon Printing Firefox Plugin was enabled.

Disclaimer

While this solution for coupon printing in Lion worked for me - everyone's system is different. So you should use your own good judgement before installing any software on your computer.

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