Microsoft traces Universal Print issues to changes in the Graph API code

Microsoft says that an ongoing issue with Universal Print sharing that prevents users from creating other printer shares is due to a code change in the Microsoft Graph API.

Universal Print is a cloud-based printing solution designed to replace a local print server setup and provide Microsoft 365 customers with centralized print management capabilities.

After confirming the issue (tracked under UP1287359) on Tuesday, Microsoft said that affected users may see “Printer Sharing Failed” errors in the Universal Print portal when creating printer shares in some cases.

“Some users who try to create printer shares created with the ‘Allow all users in my organization’ switch turned on or specific users or groups selected on the share creation screen are affected,” Microsoft explained.

“We identified a code change in the Microsoft Graph API that introduced a code error, which increased the latency of the Entra ID index iteration and exposed an existing race condition in the Universal Print share creation flow. This caused the retry logic to fail and the share operation to not complete as expected.”

While Microsoft has yet to share which regions or how many users are affected by this ongoing issue, it has marked it as an incident, a flag commonly used to describe critical service issues that have a noticeable impact on users.

Microsoft is now deploying a code change to fix the code bug and sharing a 13-step mitigation process that can help affected users troubleshoot the issue until it’s fixed:

1. Go to the Azure portal, then Universal Print, then Printers
2. Select the printer you want to share
3. Click “Printer Sharing” (or “Share a Printer”)
4. Enter a name for the share
5. DO NOT say “Allow all users in my organization.” Leave this unchecked.
6. Do NOT select specific users or groups in this step.
7. Click “Share Printer”
8. Wait 30 seconds for sharing to fully propagate
9. Navigate to Universal Print, then Printer Shares
10. Select the newly created share
11. Go to the “Members” tab (or “Access Control”)
12. Add users or security groups manually
13. If all users need access, add an organization-wide security group (eg, “All Company”) to your Entra ID directory.

After applying the workaround, users are advised to wait 1 to 2 minutes and try again if the share creation still fails.

Last month, Microsoft also released out-of-band updates to fix broken sign-in with Microsoft accounts in all Microsoft applications.

Most recently, on Friday, Microsoft rolled back a service update that was preventing some Microsoft Teams users from launching the desktop client, and released a set of emergency updates over the weekend to address known Windows Server issues that cause security update installation problems and domain controllers enter a restart loop.