I have a Cannon S400 Bubble Jet. I am trying to print a document in black & white butan error comes up that my yellow ink cartridge is empty and therefore won't print. I'm on a very tight budget and would prefer not to have to go out and buy a yellow ink cartridge when I have no need to print colour documents at this time. Is there any way around this?

Yellow ink cartridge? My guess is you have a color cartridge & the yellow part of the cartridge is empty. When printing in black with a color cartridge, all the colors blend together to create black. If you don't wanna shell out $20-$30 for a new cartridge, you could transfer the document to a floppy or CD, then run to your nearest Kinko's (or whatever) & they'll print it for you

RAF, Try this. Follow the instructions to replace a cartridge. When you remove the yellow cartridge, simply put it back in again. Hopefully this will reset the LOW INK WARNING (it's a counter that actually "counts" the number of dots used from the cartridges). Some Canon printers have the option of disabling the LOW INK WARNING, while others allow you to rest it manually. Check your printer manual and see if those options are available. Oh and JAM, I think this printer has three colour cartridges, Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan. Safe Computing...:o)

Some (very cheap) inkjet printers do not actually have a black cartridge. Instead, they mix together the colors from the three color cartridges to create a kind of ugly purplish-brownish-black. The degree of effectiveness in creating a convincing black color varies greatly with the printer. In short, you may indeed have to buy a yellow cartridge to continue printing in black. :-|

Thanks jam. Just to clarify, the printer uses a four cartridge system. Black, cyan, red & yellow are each in a separate cartridge and are sold individually. With the printer set to print in black & white, I would think that an empty colour cartridge would not matter.

Ignore my last post. I didn't hit the confirm button and left the computer. Thanks for your help. pcfixinguy, I'll give your suggestion a try and get back to you. RAF

Resetting the empty cartridge worked! Thanks again.