I finally managed to get our Epson printer working with Catalina.
I had a very helpful and fruitful online Chat session with an Epson agent.
The solution seems to have been to select Printers in Preferences, then delete the printer, turn the printer on, then add it in again.
In my case it was shown as Airprint. Ignore that and select the Use field to use the same text as the Name field. Then it worked.
At least that's one less problem for now - but Apple seem to have created lots of problems with the Catalina release. Before finding the final solution I was advised to download an installer - using a link supplied by the agent - but that didn't work as not compatible - presumably only 32 bit!
The biggest loss seems to be Excel - I can generally live without Microsoft Word - using Open Office. I don't think the Open Office eqivalent of Excel is anything like as good. Mmmm - I suppose I lost Powerpoint as well. Oh - really not good. Other people are suggesting I should revert back to Mojave, but I'm not sure that would really make sense - this could be really rather difficult, and I suppose this pain would have to come back sooner or later with another OS release.
My advice to anyone thinking of "upgrading" a MacOS who isn't already on Mojave or Catalina is to try not to progress beyond Mojave, at least not without considering what might be affected and what impact that will have. That may be difficult. Apple make it quite difficult to obtain versions which are intermediate between Yosemite and Catalina, particularly since the last two versions.
Definitely do a bootable clone beforehand, so as to retain some compatibiliity, and the option to reinstall if necessary. Also, consider installing Catalina on an external drive (SSD preferred), rather than the main drive during the install process, unless sure that the problems of Catalina won't bite too hard. I wish I'd been able to give myself this advice, though would I have believed myself?!
I had a very helpful and fruitful online Chat session with an Epson agent.
The solution seems to have been to select Printers in Preferences, then delete the printer, turn the printer on, then add it in again.
In my case it was shown as Airprint. Ignore that and select the Use field to use the same text as the Name field. Then it worked.
At least that's one less problem for now - but Apple seem to have created lots of problems with the Catalina release. Before finding the final solution I was advised to download an installer - using a link supplied by the agent - but that didn't work as not compatible - presumably only 32 bit!
The biggest loss seems to be Excel - I can generally live without Microsoft Word - using Open Office. I don't think the Open Office eqivalent of Excel is anything like as good. Mmmm - I suppose I lost Powerpoint as well. Oh - really not good. Other people are suggesting I should revert back to Mojave, but I'm not sure that would really make sense - this could be really rather difficult, and I suppose this pain would have to come back sooner or later with another OS release.
My advice to anyone thinking of "upgrading" a MacOS who isn't already on Mojave or Catalina is to try not to progress beyond Mojave, at least not without considering what might be affected and what impact that will have. That may be difficult. Apple make it quite difficult to obtain versions which are intermediate between Yosemite and Catalina, particularly since the last two versions.
Definitely do a bootable clone beforehand, so as to retain some compatibiliity, and the option to reinstall if necessary. Also, consider installing Catalina on an external drive (SSD preferred), rather than the main drive during the install process, unless sure that the problems of Catalina won't bite too hard. I wish I'd been able to give myself this advice, though would I have believed myself?!