Printer Add button not enabled in ubuntu 12.04

I am trying to set-up a network printer on my system.

Navigated to System Setting>>Printing and viola the Add button out there is disabled.

When i troubleshooted using Help it said that the CUPS print spooler does not appear to be running. To correct this, choose System->Administration->Services from the main menu and look for 'cups' service.

Please tell me what to do in order to add a printer!

Answer

When CUPS is not running the Printers panel looks like this on my Ubunbu 12.04:

Is this what you see?

About CUPS:

• 
  

  Use this command to check whether CUPS is installed:

  
  

  dpkg --list | grep ' cups '
  

  
  

  Typical output when installed is:

  
  

  ii  cups                1.5.3-0ubuntu4      Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - server
  

  
  

  If you don't see any output, install CUPS:

  
  

  sudo apt-get install cups
  

  
  

  and start it:

  
  

  Ubuntu 12.04: sudo service cups start

  
  

  Ubuntu 16.04: sudo sudo systemctl start cups.service

  
  


• 
  

  If it is already installed it may not be running, check it like this:

  
  

  ps -ef|grep cups | grep -v grep
  

  
  

  Typical output when running is:

  
  

  root       925     1  0 Oct17 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/cupsd -F
  

  
  

  If you don't see any output CUPS is not running. Start it like this:

  
  

  Ubuntu 12.04: sudo service cups start

  
  

  Ubuntu 16.04: sudo sudo systemctl start cups.service

  
  

Could you try it and post any problems?

More information on CUPS: