Brother 'Out of Memory': fixing memory full errors

What causes it

• A single page containing very large images or complex graphics
• Printing at maximum resolution on a machine with limited memory
• Many stored faxes or secure print jobs occupying memory
• A large number of queued jobs sent at once
• Page protection or spooling settings in the driver forcing whole-page rendering

How to fix it, in order

Work down the list and stop when the printer recovers. The steps are ordered from most likely and least invasive to last resort.

1. Press Go or Start to release the partial job

   On many Brother lasers, pressing Go, Start or OK prints whatever fits in memory and clears the message. That is the quickest way to get the machine responsive again, though the page may be incomplete. If the machine remains stuck, press Cancel or Stop to discard the job entirely.

2. Clear the print queue on the computer

   Open Settings, Bluetooth and devices, Printers and scanners on Windows, select the Brother, choose Open print queue and cancel everything in it. On a Mac, open System Settings, Printers and Scanners, click the printer, choose Printer Queue and cancel the jobs. Jobs stack up quickly once one fails.

3. Reduce the print resolution in the driver

   Open the printer's Printing Preferences, go to the Basic or Advanced tab and drop the resolution from 1200 dpi to 600 dpi. That halves the memory needed per page and is usually indistinguishable for text documents. This alone resolves most photo-heavy jobs on entry-level models.

4. Turn off page protection or change the graphics mode

   In Printing Preferences, look under Advanced, then Other Print Options, for settings such as Improve Print Output or graphics mode options. Switching the driver to use the printer's own font handling rather than sending everything as graphics substantially reduces memory demand on text-heavy documents.

5. Print the document as an image at lower quality

   For a PDF, open it in a reader and use its own print settings to choose Print as Image at 300 dpi. This flattens the whole page to a simple bitmap and avoids the complex rendering that overwhelms limited memory, which is particularly effective for PDFs containing scanned pages or CAD drawings.

6. Clear stored faxes and secure jobs

   On multifunction models, received faxes held in memory take space that print jobs then cannot use. Print or delete any stored faxes, and clear any secure print jobs waiting for a PIN. Then power cycle the machine so memory is fully released.

7. Split the document and print in batches

   If a long document still fails, print it in blocks of ten or twenty pages. It is a workaround rather than a fix, but it reliably gets the job done and it identifies whether one specific page is the problem, which is worth knowing if you print that document regularly.

Frequently asked questions