A problem that crops up fairly regularly after a reinstall or upgrade of Mint is that I can’t access my scanner.

I have an HP Officejet J4680 multi-function device which operates via wireless.  Recently, after upgrading to Mint 14, the problem arose again.  I could print but Mint couldn’t see the scanner.

After a bit of research I discovered the simple solution which I am putting up here to remind myself for the next time.

Instead of the route Menu –> Preferences –> Printers, (which will add the printer but that’s all) it is preferable to use the Terminal command –

system-config-printer

This will pull up a different (and slightly more advanced) dialog section.  Once the device is added via this path, both printing and scanning work perfectly.