The invention relates to a method for compensating for defective printing nozzles (11) in an inkjet printing machine (7) by way of a computer (6,19). Defective printing nozzles are compensated for byan increased ink drop volume of neighboring printing nozzles (11) and the real positions of the print dots of all printing nozzles (11) are determined and, to compensate for a printing nozzle failure,the required ink drop volumes of the respective neighboring printing nozzles (13,14) are calculated for every printing nozzle as a function of the real positions of the print dots of the respective neighboring printing nozzles. In addition to increased ink drop volumes of the respective neighboring printing nozzles (13), reduced ink drop volumes are calculated for the respective next but one printing nozzles (14) and all ink drop volumes are calculated based on the print dots of the respective printing nozzles.