Printer Jam? Pull the Paper the Way It Was Going

The printer stopped halfway through and there is a sheet stuck somewhere inside. Your instinct is to grab the visible corner and pull. Hold on for thirty seconds first.

Which direction you pull decides whether this takes two minutes or turns into an afternoon of fishing out shreds. I have sorted this by where the paper actually stopped. That is what changes the answer.

Find your case below, and there is a section at the end for when the message stays after the paper is out.

Before you pull anything

Two things, and they cost you nothing.

Documented by Epson on its paper jam page, as the first step: "Cancel the print job from your computer, if necessary."

Otherwise the printer feeds again the moment it clears. You get a second jam on top of the first.

Epson's safety line, which matters more than it sounds: "Never touch the buttons on the control panel while your hand is inside the printer."

⚠️ And one from Epson that catches people with inkjets: "When removing jammed paper, avoid tilting the printer, placing it vertically, or turning it upside down; otherwise ink may leak."

⛔ Ours, and marked as ours: do not tug. Paper tears at the point of most resistance, and every scrap you leave behind becomes a jam you will be back for.

If the paper is at the front, in the tray

The commonest one, and the easiest.

Brother's instruction on its paper jam page: "Pull the paper tray completely out of the machine."

Then: "Carefully check the cavity where the paper tray was installed."

And the direction, which is the whole point of this section: "If any paper remains in this area remove it by slowly pulling it towards the front of the machine."

⭐ Forward, because that is where it came from. A sheet caught at the tray has not entered the mechanism yet. Pulling it back out the way it went in meets nothing.

Take your whole stack out while the tray is on the floor. Fan it. Square the edges and put it back. Half of these jams are a stack that was fanned badly or overfilled.

If it is at the back, behind the rear cover

Different end of the machine, opposite answer, and it is the one that catches you out.

Brother: "Remove the Rear Cover from the back of the machine by grasping it at the center and pulling it straight away from the machine."

Then the direction: "Slowly pull the paper out to the rear of the machine to avoid tearing the page."

⭐ Backwards here, because the paper was already on its way out the back. You are finishing the journey it was making, not reversing it.

⚠️ On a laser printer the rear door is where the duplex unit and the fuser live. Check that door is properly latched afterwards. A rear door that has not clicked shut produces a jam message with nothing stuck at all.

If it is under the scanner or the print head

An all-in-one hides a whole section under the lid. The jam is often there.

Brother: "Lift the flat-bed scanner until it locks securely into the open position." Then: "Carefully examine the open area under the flatbed scanner."

On an inkjet the print head may be parked over the paper. Brother's own instruction for that: "Gently move the print head using your fingers to take out any paper remaining in this area."

⚡ Move it, do not force it. It slides along a rail. Light pressure is enough. If it will not move, the machine is holding it. Unplugging the printer releases it.

When paper tore and pieces are left inside

This is the situation the direction rule exists to prevent, and it is recoverable.

Brother's method: "To remove the small pieces of paper, you can use a pair of tweezers."

And its warning about doing that. Be careful not to touch or scratch the internal parts with your hand or the tweezers.

⭐ Ours: work with a torch, not by feel. A phone light held in your other hand turns this from guesswork into a two-minute job.

⚠️ Ours, and it matters on a laser: the fuser is the heated roller assembly, and it stays hot for a while after printing. Give it ten minutes before you put a hand or a pair of tweezers near the rear.

When the paper is out and the message stays

Extremely common, and there is a documented reset for it that almost nobody knows.

Brother's first move is not a setting or a driver: "To clear the error message Paper Jam after you removed the jammed paper, please open and close the scanner cover."

⭐ That is it. Opening and closing the cover makes the machine re-read its own sensors. A stale jam flag then clears.

If it does not, Brother says what is probably going on: "If you still receive the error message, a small piece of paper may be stuck inside your Brother machine."

Then a full power cycle. Brother's procedure has you unplug the machine from the wall socket, work through the paper paths, then plug it back in.

⚡ Ours: clear the print queue on the PC at this point too. A stuck job will re-trigger the whole thing the second the printer comes back. The queue is where a lot of printing faults actually sit.

When there is no paper in there at all

The phantom jam. The printer insists. You have looked three times and there is genuinely nothing.

Reported by an owner on a thread about a Canon Pixma that kept claiming a jam with nothing inside. Another owner on the same thread had found the cause on their own machine. It is worth reading.

They found a leaf from a houseplant inside the printer, sitting against the mechanical sensor that detects whether paper is present. It was invisible from the outside. Removing it fixed the machine.

A third owner on that thread described where that sensor sits on the Pixma. At the bottom of the paper path, reachable through the cover you open to change cartridges, a small black part in a slot slightly right of center.

Their advice was to check it moves freely.

⚠️ That thread is from 2011 and 2012 and I am saying so rather than presenting it as current. It is used as evidence of a mechanism that has not changed, because these sensors still work the same way.

⭐ Ours: the sensor is a small plastic flag that the paper pushes as it passes. Anything holding it down reads to the printer as paper that never left. A scrap, a staple, dried ink, a leaf.

Brother describes the same part on its own machines as a small white plastic piece. Its guidance is to check whether that piece is missing.

Why it happened, so you stop doing it

Worth two minutes, because the same jam tends to come back.

Epson's own closing instruction after clearing a jam is about prevention: "Carefully follow all paper loading instructions when you load new paper."

⭐ Ours, and it covers most repeat jams. Paper that has been sitting in a damp room. A stack loaded past the fill line.

Sheets that were already curled, two paper weights mixed in one tray, and guides that were never pushed in against the edges.

⚡ Rollers wear smooth and stop gripping. A machine that was fine for years and now jams every third page is usually the pickup roller. Not anything you are doing.

⚠️ HP's own support pages could not be read for this article. Re-tested on 23 August 2026, `support.hp.com` timed out to the fetcher and to a browser user agent. Nothing here is attributed to HP.

If the printer clears the jam and still refuses to print, that is a different fault. And if the page comes out marked rather than stuck, the mark names the part.

Status: compiled 23 August 2026 from Brother and Epson documentation. Brother documents the tray and rear cover routes with the pulling direction for each, the scanner lift, moving the print head by hand, tweezers for scraps, and the cover-open reset for a stale jam message. Epson documents cancelling the job and both warnings. The blocked sensor case is an owner report from 2012, dated in the body. HP support was unreachable.

How do I get jammed paper out of a printer?

Pull it in the direction it was already traveling. Paper caught at the tray comes forward, out the way it went in. Paper caught at the back comes out the back. Cancel the print job first. Then pull slowly with both hands so it does not tear.

My printer says paper jam but there is no paper

Open and close your scanner cover first. That is Brother's own way to clear a stale jam message.

If it stays, something is holding the mechanical paper sensor down. One owner found a plant leaf against theirs. A scrap, a staple or dried ink does the same.

Should I turn the printer off before clearing a jam?

Cancel the print job first, which Epson lists as step one. Keep your hands away from the control panel while reaching inside. Brother's procedure for a jam message that will not clear does have you unplug the machine from the wall, work the paper paths, then plug it back in.

What if the paper tears and pieces stay inside?

Get every piece out before printing again. A scrap left behind is the next jam. Brother recommends tweezers for the small pieces and warns against scratching the internal parts. Work with a torch rather than by feel, and give a laser printer ten minutes to cool.

The Short Version

• Cancel the print job before you reach inside, or the printer feeds again mid-repair.
• Pull the paper the way it was already going. Forward at the tray, backwards at the rear cover.
• Slowly, with both hands. Tearing is what turns two minutes into an afternoon.
• Under the scanner on an all-in-one, and the print head can be moved gently by hand.
• Jam message still there with the paper out? Open and close the scanner cover.
• Nothing inside at all usually means something is holding the paper sensor down.
• Do not tilt an inkjet to look inside it. Epson warns that ink can leak.
• Damp paper, an overfilled tray and loose guides cause most repeat jams.

Where to Next

Cancel the job on the PC. Then find which end the paper stopped at, and pull it that way. Those two decisions handle nearly all of these.

Once it is out, count what you retrieved against a whole sheet. If a corner is missing, it is still in there. It will jam again tomorrow.

If the machine clears but still prints nothing, start from the test page instead. That separates the printer from the PC in one step.

And if you find something odd wedged against the sensor in yours, drop it below. That list is genuinely useful, and I already have a plant leaf on it.