Home › Canon › Canon Printer › Canon PIXMA P-Series Error Codes (P01–P26): Every Code Explained

Canon PIXMA P-Series Error Codes (P01–P26): Every Code Explained

Canon Printer display showing GUIDE — FixCode Guide error code graphic

The P codes are the rarer half of Canon's LED-display language, and this guide begins with the fact that shapes everything about them: Canon's own LED documentation defines exactly three P codes by number — P02, P07 and P10 — and handles every other error on these models with one generic instruction. That is not a gap in this page's research; it is Canon's design, stated on Canon's own support page. What follows is therefore the complete, verified P-series story: the three defined codes in depth, Canon's procedure for everything else, how to translate a P code into the support code it renders, and an explicit warning about the confident third-party P-code lists that contradict Canon — because on this platform, believing them will send you fixing the wrong part.

Safety first. Work unplugged. Canon's procedures consistently put 'turn off and unplug' ahead of any internal inspection, and covers should only be opened as far as the model's consumer documentation describes (carriage and tank access); everything deeper is service work, on machines connected to mains electricity. Inside a PIXMA, observe Canon MX922's labelled warning: do not touch the clear encoder film, the white carriage belt or the ink tubes during jam clearing and cleaning — the film is both fragile and a diagnostic component. Treat ink as a chemical consumable: wash skin contact, keep cartridges and MegaTank ink away from eyes, and never defeat the ink-out protection (holding Stop for 5 seconds to disable remaining-ink detection) as a routine — Canon warns that printing under ink-out conditions may damage the machine and accepts no liability for that damage. On imageRUNNER machines add heat and scale: the fixing unit runs at fuser temperatures (the E001 thresholds in Canon's manuals are in the hundreds of degrees), internal parts are service-only, and a copier that has tripped a fixing protection code should be left to a technician rather than repeatedly reset and retried.

What P codes are, and how the display shows them

On PIXMA models with a segment LED display, serious machine errors are reported the same way E codes are — the display alternates characters, showing P, then the code's digits (P, 0, 2 for P02) — and the P distinguishes the class: where E codes mostly cover operating conditions (paper, cartridges, ink, covers), Canon's documented P codes are machine errors, the stops. Canon's LED support page is the platform's master document, and its structure defines this guide: it gives P02, P07 and P10 individual entries with their support-code equivalents and handling, and then — a fact worth reading twice — it handles every other case with a single generic entry ('other cases than above'): turn the machine off, unplug the power cord, plug it back in, turn it on; if the error is not resolved, contact the service centre. So a P code on your display resolves into one of four situations: one of the three Canon defines, or Canon's generic machine-error procedure. There is no fifth possibility in Canon's documentation, and any source that offers you a longer P-code table is not working from Canon's page. The next three sections take the defined codes one at a time; the sections after them handle the generic case and the translation skill that makes all of Canon's support library usable from an LED machine.

P02: carriage error — support code 5100 in LED language

P02 is support code 5100, the carriage error, and Canon's LED page gives it the fullest treatment of any P code — three named checks, in order. First: is protective material left inside the machine? Second: is foreign material left inside the machine? Third — the check Canon explains at unusual length — the encoder film: 'The printer detects the position of the FINE cartridge holder by the encoder film. If the film is smeared, the holder position cannot be detected properly, resulting in Error P, 0, 2', and the page directs you to clean the encoder film, with the service centre as the endpoint if the code remains. The full diagnosis lives on this site's 5100 deep page, and it transfers unchanged: something is physically blocking the holder's travel (packing, paper, an object), or the holder moves but the printer cannot see where it is because the clear encoder strip it reads is coated with ink mist or grease. Two platform notes are worth adding here. The LED page's check order is Canon's order — obstructions before film — because obstructions are commoner and free. And the film warning that Canon's MX922 article diagrams (do not touch the clear film in passing; fingerprints are one of the things that smear it) applies with full force to LED models: the encoder film is a part you inspect visually first and touch only as the cleaning procedure directs.

P07: the machine error that means the absorber is full

P07 is the LED rendering of the waste-ink-absorber-full family: Canon's LED page maps it to support codes 5B02, 5B04, 5B12 and 5B14, and its published text is the family's terminal wording — 'The machine error has occurred. Contact the service center.' No press-to-continue, no owner procedure: on an LED model, P07 is where the absorber story ends. Its warning stage exists on this platform too, under a different letter: E08 ('ink absorber almost full', press Black or Color to continue). The pair E08/P07 is therefore the LED owner's version of 1700/5B00, and the guidance from this site's 5B00 page transfers without alteration: the absorber pads and their counter have reached the limit Canon set, the legitimate outcomes are absorber service (pads replaced, counter reset by the technician) or printer replacement, and there is no Canon-documented owner reset for the counter on these models either. One misuse to warn against specifically on this platform: because P07 is short and unexplained on the display, owners go looking for its meaning online and find the third-party P lists — which, as the next-but-one section documents, assign P07 meanings from other machines' service tables. Canon's page is unambiguous, and the mapping it gives (5B02/5B04/5B12/5B14 — the absorber-full support-code family) settles what P07 is: the same full absorber an LCD model reports as 5B00.

P10: support code B200 on an LED display

P10 is support code B200, rendered for a display that cannot show it. Canon's LED page gives it the family's classic three-beat handling: turn the printer off, unplug the power cord, contact the service centre. B200's full story lives on this site's deep page for that code, and its essentials transfer directly: Canon's manuals define B200 only as 'a printer error has occurred'; Canon USA's guidance for the B200-B207 range states that if the code reappears after the manual power reset, the print head hardware has likely failed; Canon staff describe it as a print head / general hardware failure. The one procedural nuance the LED page adds is emphasis: for P10, Canon's LED text goes straight to off-unplug-service without even the power-reset framing, which tells you how Canon expects this code to end. The honest owner procedure for P10 is therefore: protect any stored faxes first if your model is a fax model (Canon's standing warning — unplugging deletes faxes in memory), unplug, and make the service call, quoting both renderings: 'P10 on the display — support code B200'. Do not let the short display code talk you into a short diagnosis: of all the codes in the LED vocabulary, P10 is the most likely to be the printer's last, and Canon's documentation treats it that way from the first line.

Every other P code: Canon's generic machine-error procedure

If your display shows a P code other than P02, P07 or P10, Canon's LED page has already written your procedure — it is the 'other cases than above' entry, and it is the whole of Canon's consumer documentation for your situation: turn the machine off; unplug the power cord; plug the power cord back in; turn the machine on. If the error is still displayed, contact the service centre. That brevity deserves respect rather than supplementation. Canon publishes individual procedures where an owner procedure exists — P02's checks prove it — so a model error that gets only the generic entry is one Canon has decided owners cannot usefully subdivide: the machine has detected an internal fault outside the documented three, and the power cycle's job is to separate a transient internal state (cleared, gone, printer works) from a standing fault (returns, and belongs to service). Work it exactly as written, once, and read the result as Canon intends: cleared-and-stays-cleared means you are done; returned means the diagnosis is complete at owner level and the code — quoted exactly as displayed, with the model — goes to the service centre, whose documentation for these models goes deeper than the consumer page. What the generic entry forbids, by its silence, is improvisation: no button sequences, no cartridge rituals, no partial disassembly are Canon procedures for an undocumented P code.

Translating P codes: the support code is the key to Canon's library

The most useful skill on the LED platform is translation, because Canon's support library — its articles, its manuals, its phone support — is indexed primarily by support code, and the LED page gives you the dictionary for the P family: P02 is 5100, P07 is the 5B02/5B04/5B12/5B14 absorber group, P10 is B200. With the translation in hand, three things open up. Canon's deep documentation for the underlying fault becomes reachable (this site's 5100 and B200 pages are written from it, and Canon USA's articles likewise). The service conversation becomes precise — 'P07, support codes 5B02 family, absorber full' is a quote-ready brief. And the internet becomes safer to search: results for the support code, filtered for Canon's own domains, are far more reliable than results for the P code, which is where the third-party lists breed. Two cautions complete the skill. Translation runs through your model's generation: the LED page's mappings are Canon's current published ones, and very old LED models' manuals occasionally render a fault differently, so your own manual's table outranks any general page when they differ. And translation is one-directional for diagnosis — a support code's procedure applies to your LED machine only insofar as your machine has the parts it names (an LCD model's on-screen prompts obviously do not exist for you), while its causes, checks and endpoints transfer fully.

Why the internet's P-code lists are wrong — the P02 test case

Search for Canon P codes and you will find confident, complete tables: P01 through P26 and beyond, each with a crisp meaning. They conflict with Canon, and P02 is the provable case. A widely copied third-party document assigns P02 to the ink absorber; Canon's own LED page defines P02 as support code 5100, the carriage error, complete with the encoder-film explanation. Both cannot be true, and only one of them is Canon. The lists' provenance explains them: they descend from service-era tables for older MP-generation machines (where letter codes were technician diagnostics with different assignments), copied from PDF to forum to content farm for two decades, acquiring certainty at every hop. The damage is practical, not academic: an owner who believes P02 means the absorber books absorber service for a carriage obstruction, or worse, pays for a counter reset while a paper clip sits in the carriage path. This site's rule — two Canon sources or the code goes in the unverified list — exists for exactly this terrain. Apply it yourself with one test: for any P-code meaning you are offered, ask which Canon document states it. If the answer is a PDF on a file-sharing site rather than a canon.com domain or a Canon manual, you have found folklore, and Canon's three defined codes plus its generic procedure are the whole truth available to owners.

P codes vs E codes: which letter shows, and why it matters less than you think

Owners often ask whether P errors are 'worse' than E errors, and Canon's tables support a softened version of that reading: the three documented P codes are all machine stops (carriage fault, absorber full, B200), while the E table mixes stops with requests and configurations (load paper, close a cover, connect a cable). But the letter itself is not a severity scale Canon publishes — it is a rendering choice of the LED platform, and the same fault can wear either letter depending on the machine's generation and vocabulary: the absorber's warning is an E code (E08) and its full state a P code (P07); the carriage fault is a P code (P02) while its neighbouring conditions are E codes. The practical reading is therefore per-code, not per-letter: ask what the specific code's Canon entry says — its support-code mapping, its named checks, its stated endpoint — and let that decide urgency. P10 and a cleared-after-one-restart generic P code are both 'P errors', and they have almost nothing in common; E08 (act soon) and E16 (act now) are both 'E errors', with the same spread. Canon's documentation rewards reading the entry, not the alphabet.

What to do, step by step, when any P code appears

Consolidating Canon's documentation into one procedure for the platform: (1) Read the code properly — the display alternates, so watch a full cycle and write down the letter and every digit exactly (P, 0, 7 — not 'P7-ish'). Note the model. (2) If the model is a fax model and you are about to unplug, retrieve any stored faxes first; Canon warns unplugging deletes them. (3) If the code is P02, work its three checks in Canon's order: protective material inside, foreign material inside, then the encoder film (visual first; clean only as the manual directs). If it is P07 or P10, Canon's handling is off, unplug, service centre — after step 2, make the call. (4) For any other P code, run Canon's generic procedure once: off, unplug, replug, on. (5) Read the outcome as Canon intends: cleared and stays cleared through a test print means done; returned means service, with the exact code and model quoted. (6) Whatever the code, translate it to its support code (via the LED page's mappings for the defined three) before searching or calling — it is the key that opens Canon's real documentation. Notice what this procedure never contains: repeated power cycles as a treatment, button combinations, or opening the machine beyond the covers the manual opens. Canon's page is short because the owner's true procedure on this platform is short.

The P numbers Canon does not define

For completeness, and under the same two-Canon-sources rule this site applies everywhere: Canon's LED documentation defines P02, P07 and P10 by number, and no other P numbers. P01, P03, P04, P05, P06, P08, P09 and P11 through P26 are therefore listed here as undocumented in Canon's consumer sources — named, with no meanings, because Canon publishes none that this research could capture. This is the section the third-party lists pretend cannot exist: confronted with their tables, the honest answer is that a P05 or a P22 on your display is handled by Canon's generic procedure (one power cycle, then the service centre if it returns), and its internal meaning — whatever the machine's service documentation says — is not published for owners. If your machine shows one of these numbers, do not let a content farm's table talk you into a part: quote the exact code and model to Canon support, whose internal tables cover their own machines, and let the generic procedure's outcome (clears, or returns) carry the diagnosis as far as owner-level work legitimately goes.

Key takeaways

Canon's LED page defines exactly three P codes — P02 (5100, carriage), P07 (absorber full), P10 (B200) — and gives every other P code one generic procedure: off, unplug, replug, on, then service if it returns.
Test any P-code meaning you find online with one question: which Canon document states it? The viral lists descend from old MP-era service tables — one assigns P02 to the ink absorber, which Canon's own page disproves.
Translate before you search: P02 = 5100, P07 = 5B02/5B04/5B12/5B14, P10 = B200. Canon's support library is indexed by support code, and that is where the reliable procedures live.

Resetting the Canon printer

Canon documents one general power reset for its printers, in the form given in Canon USA's B203 article and repeated across its support-code procedures: turn the printer off, unplug the power cord, wait at least two minutes, plug the cord back in, and turn the printer on. The LED-display manuals give the same motion in shorter form for undocumented errors (turn off, unplug, plug back in, turn on; if the error remains, contact the service centre). This reset clears transient internal states only — Canon's guidance is explicit for code families like B200-B207 that a code which reappears after the reset has given its verdict (there, likely print head hardware failure and service). Two standing cautions attach to the unplug step on Canon machines: on fax models (the MX line), unplugging deletes faxes stored in the printer's memory, so retrieve them first; and for imageRUNNER copiers, user power cycling is not an error clear at all — iR errors are cleared in service mode (COPIER > FUNCTION > CLEAR > ERR) by a technician after the fault is repaired, and repeated clearing of protection codes like E001 without repair defeats a safety function.