If several users print to the network printer at the same time, the network has to keep the print jobs separate from one another. If it didn’t, the result would be a jumbled mess, with your 268-page report getting mixed in with the payroll checks. That would be bad. Fortunately, the network takes care of this situation by using the fancy print spooling feature.
Network printing works on a first-come, first-served basis. Invariably, when I get in line at the hardware store, the person in front of me is trying to buy something that doesn’t have a product code on it. I end up standing there for hours waiting for someone in Plumbing to pick up the phone for a price check. Network printing can be like that. If someone sends a two-hour print job to the printer before you send your half-page memo, you have to wait.
You may have access to a local printer and several network printers. Before you were forced to use the network, your computer probably had just one printer attached to it. You may want to print some documents on your cheap (oops, I mean local) inkjet printer but use the network laser printer for important stuff. To do that, you have to find out how to use your programs’ functions for switching printers.
Adding a network printer
Before you can print to a network printer, you have to configure your computer to access the network printer that you want to use. From the Start menu, open the Control Panel and then double-click the Printers icon. If your computer is already configured to work with a network printer, an icon for the network printer appears in the Printers folder. You can tell a network printer from a local printer by the shape of the printer icon. Network printer icons have a pipe attached to the bottom of the printer.
If you don’t have a network printer configured for your computer, you can add one by using the Add Printer Wizard. Just follow these steps:
1 Open the Control Panel.Windows 7 or earlier: Choose Start ⇒ Control Panel.Windows 8 and later: Press the Windows key, type Control, and then click the Control Panel icon.
2 Click Devices and Printers.
3 Click the Add a Printer button on the toolbar.This step starts the Add Printer Wizard, as shown in Figure 3-7.
4 Click the printer you want to use. If you can’t find the printer you want to use, ask your network administrator for the printer’s UNC path, which is the name used to identify the printer on the network, or its IP address. Then click The Printer That I Want Isn’t Listed and enter the UNC or IP address for the printer when prompted.
5 Click Next to add the printer.The wizard copies to your computer the correct printer driver for the network printer. (You may be prompted to confirm that you want to add the driver. If so, click Install Driver to proceed.)FIGURE 3-7: The Add Printer Wizard asks you to pick a printer.The Add Printer Wizard displays a screen that shows the printer’s name and asks whether you want to designate the printer as your default printer.
6 (Optional) Designate the printer as your default printer.
7 Click Next to continue.A final confirmation dialog box is displayed.
8 Click Finish.You’re done!
Printer.SimpsonFamily.com. If that’s the case, you can often set up the printer in a click or two: Use your browser to go to the printer’s web page and then click a link that enables you to install the printer.)
Printing to a network printer
After you install the network printer in Windows, printing to the network printer is a snap. You can print to the network printer from any Windows program by using the Print command to summon the Print dialog box, which is usually found on the File menu. For example, Figure 3-8 shows the Print dialog box for WordPad (the free text-editing program that comes with Windows). The available printers are listed near the top of this dialog box. Choose the network printer from this list.
FIGURE 3-8: A typical Print dialog box.
Playing with the print queue
After you send your document to a network printer, you usually don’t have to worry about it. You just go to the network printer, and voilà! Your printed document is waiting for you.
That’s what happens in the ideal world. In the real world, where you and I live, all sorts of things can happen to your print job between the time you send it to the network printer and the time it prints:
You discover that someone else already sent a 50 trillion–page report ahead of you that isn’t expected to finish printing until the national debt is paid off.
The price of a framis valve suddenly goes up by $2, rendering foolish the recommendations you made in your report.
Your boss calls and tells you that his brother-in-law will be attending the meeting, so won’t you please print an extra copy of the proposal for him? Oh, and a photocopy won’t do. Originals only, please.
You decide to take lunch, so you don’t want the output to print until you get back.
Fortunately, your print job isn’t totally beyond your control just because you already sent it to the network printer. You can easily change the status of jobs that you already sent. You can change the order in which jobs print, hold a job so that it doesn’t print until you say so, or cancel a job.
You can probably make your network print jobs do other tricks, too: shake hands, roll over, and play dead. But the basic tricks — hold, cancel, and change the print order — are enough to get you started.
To play with the printer queue, open the Control Panel by choosing Start ⇒ Control Panel in Windows 7 or earlier; or press the Windows key, type Control, and the click the Control Panel icon. Then click Devices and Printers and double-click the icon for the printer that you want to manage. A window similar to the one shown in Figure 3-9 appears. You can see that just one document has been sent to the printer.
FIGURE 3-9: Managing a print queue.
To manipulate the print jobs that appear in the print queue or in the printer itself, use these tricks:
To temporarily stop a job from printing: Select the job and choose Document ⇒ Pause Printing. Choose the same command again to release the job from its state of frustration and print it out, already.
To delete a print job: Select the job and choose Document ⇒ Cancel Printing.
To stop the printer: Choose Printer ⇒ Pause Printing. To resume, choose the command again.
To delete all print jobs: Choose Printer ⇒ Purge Print Documents.
To cut to the front of the line: Drag to the top of the list the print job that you want to print.
All these tips apply to your print jobs only. Unfortunately, you can’t capriciously delete other people’s print jobs.