The invention prevents and suppresses wasteful expenditure of ink which occurs when recovering nozzles. In greater detail, a plurality of head units arranged in a direction which intersects a transportation direction of a printing medium is provided, a plurality of cleaning units is disposed to face the plurality of head units, and at least one of the plurality of cleaning units is selected and moved so as to be in close contact with the corresponding cleaning unit. By such a method, only the cleaning head unit which faces the head unit of which nozzles need to be recovered is selected and is brought into contact with the head unit, and liquid is sucked in from the nozzles of the head unit.