What does error 025 mean on a Canon printer?
This is an office code rather than a home one, so if you're using a PIXMA at home you almost certainly have a different problem.
In many offices, one Canon machine owns the phone line and does the faxing for everyone else. Canon calls that one the Remote Fax server, and the machines that send through it clients. Bigger machines can have more than one phone line connected, numbered line 1, line 2 and so on, and a client can be told which of those lines to use.
Code 025 means your machine asked for a line the server doesn't have. Maybe it asked for line 2 on a server that only has line 1 connected. The server had nothing to hand the job to, so the send failed before it ever reached the phone network.
There's a second, older meaning worth knowing about. On Canon's older G3 fax machines, #025 describes a wrong auto-dial setting — specifically an attempt to auto-dial a destination that needs a subaddress registered, without one being registered. A subaddress is an extra routing number some organisations use to steer an incoming fax to a particular department or mailbox. If your machine is a standalone fax unit rather than part of a networked office setup, this is the version you're looking at.
Why is my printer showing this error?
Almost always because someone changed something on one of the two machines and the other wasn't updated to match. The usual version is a phone line being disconnected, moved, or decommissioned on the server machine while the clients carry on requesting it — the settings on your machine still point at a line that used to be there.
New installations produce this too. When a machine is first configured as a Remote Fax client, its line number has to be set to match what the server actually has, and it's easy to leave it on a default that doesn't correspond to anything real. The tell-tale sign here is that faxing has never worked from this machine, rather than having worked until recently.
It can also be a numbering assumption. If someone set up the client expecting a two-line server and only one line was ever installed, every fax from that machine fails while faxes sent at the server itself go through perfectly. That contrast is the clearest clue you have.
On the older standalone fax machines, the cause is different: the destination you're auto-dialling has been set up to require a subaddress, and the entry you're dialling from doesn't have one stored.
How do I fix error 025?
Start here: find out how many phone lines are actually connected to the shared fax machine. Everything else follows from that number, and getting it wrong is what caused the error. It's shown on the server machine under its transmission line settings — Canon labels the count No. of TX Lines.
Then, in order:
- Match the client to the server — on the machine you were sending from, open its Remote Fax transmission settings and set the line number to one the server genuinely has. If the server has a single line, that's line 1. Canon's instruction is exactly this: check the number of lines on the server, then bring the client's Remote Fax settings into line with it.
- Send a one-page test — don't test with the twelve-page contract you're in a hurry to send. A single sheet to a colleague's fax confirms the fix in thirty seconds.
- If you're on an older standalone fax machine, register the subaddress — check with the recipient what subaddress they expect, then store it with their number in the address book and dial from that entry rather than typing the number in fresh.
Realistically, steps 1 and 3 involve settings that many office machines keep behind an administrator login. If the menus are locked to you, the useful move is passing on the code and the diagnosis rather than hunting for a way in.
Do I need to call Canon?
Usually not. Nothing is broken — this is two machines holding different beliefs about how many phone lines exist, and the person who administers your printers can correct it in a couple of minutes. That's a faster call than Canon support.
Canon becomes the right call if the line numbers genuinely match on both machines and 025 still comes back, or if you're the administrator and the server's line settings won't hold the change. Have ready: both model numbers, the exact code (#025), how many phone lines are physically plugged into the server machine, and whether faxing from the server machine itself works.
Common questions
Can I still send faxes while this gets sorted out?
Yes — walk to the machine that actually has the phone line and send from there. It isn't affected, since it doesn't need to ask anyone else for a line. Not elegant, but it gets an urgent fax out.
It worked last month. Why has it broken now?
Something changed on the server side, most likely a phone line being disconnected or renumbered. Nothing needs to change on your machine for this error to appear — it can start failing while sitting untouched, because the thing it was pointing at went away.
What actually is a subaddress?
An extra number sent along with the fax number that tells the receiving machine where to route the document internally — a particular department, or a private mailbox rather than the shared output tray. Only some organisations use them. You'd know because the recipient would have given you one alongside their fax number.
