Chapter 26: Managing Print Jobs

IN THIS CHAPTER

How printing works

Making a shortcut to a printer

Stopping the printer

Printing XPS documents

Learning how to print from Windows 8.1 apps

When you print a document, there's more going on than you might expect. The printer doesn't immediately start printing. Instead, the computer needs to convert your document to a set of instructions that tells the printer what to do. Then those printer instructions have to be sent to the printer in small chunks because the printer is a slow mechanical device compared to a computer, which is much faster.

Each document you print becomes a print job that has to wait its turn in line if other documents are already printing, or waiting to be printed. Most of this activity takes place in the background, meaning that you don't have to do anything to make it happen. In fact, you can just go about using your computer normally. There's no need to wait for the document to finish printing.

How Printing Works

When you print a document, quite a bit of work takes place invisibly in the background before the printer even “knows” there's a document to print. First, a program called a print spooler (or spooler for short) makes a special copy of the document that contains instructions that tell the printer exactly what to do. Those instructions don't look anything like the document you're printing. They're just codes that tell the printer what to do so that the document it spits out ends up looking like the document that you printed.

After the spooler creates the special printer file, it can't just hand the whole thing off to the printer as one giant set of instructions. Most printers are slow mechanical devices that can hold only a small amount of information at a time in a buffer. The buffer is a storage area within the printer that holds the data to be printed until it's printed. The amount of data that can reside in the buffer depends on the size of the buffer. In some cases, the buffer will hold a large number of pages. In others, it might hold only a single page, or in the case of a complex document such as a photo, and a relatively small buffer, only part of the page might fit in the buffer at one time.

Furthermore, when the spooler has finished creating the special printer file, another document may already be printing. There may even be several documents waiting to be printed. So, the spooler has to put all the print jobs into a queue (line). All this activity takes the computer time (not your time, per se). And because each document has to be fed to the printer in small chunks, there's often time for you to do things such as cancel documents you've told Windows to print but that haven't yet been fully printed.

To manage those print jobs, you use the print queue. If a document is already printing, or waiting to print, you'll see a tiny printer icon in the notification area. When you point to that icon, the number of documents waiting to be printed appears in a tooltip, as in the example shown in Figure 26.1. Double-click that small icon to open the print queue.

As an alternative to using the notification area, you can get to the print queue from the Devices and Printers folder. To open your Devices and Printers folder, press Windows+X, click Control Panel, and click View Devices and Printers.

Once you're in the Devices and Printers folder, double-click the printer's icon to open its print queue.

Managing Print Jobs

The print queue for a printer contains all the documents that are currently printing or waiting to print. Figure 26.2 shows an example where we've already told Windows to print two documents. The first document we sent (which happens to be the document listed on the bottom of the list in this example) is currently printing. The other is waiting in line for its turn.

Managing a single document

To pause or cancel a specific print job, right-click its line in the print queue and choose one of the following options from the shortcut menu that appears:

• Pause: Stops printing the document until you restart it.
• Restart: Restarts the paused print job.
• Cancel: Cancels the print job so that it doesn't print and removes the job from the print queue.
• Properties: Provides detailed information about the print job. You can also set the document's priority. The higher the priority, the more likely the print job is to cut in line ahead of other documents waiting to be printed.

Managing several documents

To pause, restart, or cancel several documents in the queue, select their icons. For example, click the first job you want to change. Then hold down the Shift key and select the last one. Optionally, you can select (or deselect) icons by holding down the Ctrl key as you click. Then right-click any selected item, or choose Document from the menu bar, and choose an action. The action will be applied to all selected icons.

Managing all documents

You can use commands on the print queue's Printer menu, shown in Figure 26.3, to manage all the documents in the queue without selecting any items first. The following options apply to all documents:

• Pause Printing: Pause the current print job and all those waiting in line. See the section “Printing Offline,” later in this chapter, for an example of when this would be useful.
• Cancel All Documents: You guessed it — this cancels the current print job and all those waiting to be printed.

Changing the print queue order

In the print queue, you can change the order in which documents in the queue will print. For example, if you need a particular printout right now, and there's a long line of documents waiting ahead of it, you can give your document a higher priority so it prints sooner. In other words, your print job gets to cut in line ahead of others.

To change an item in the print queue's priority, right-click the item in the queue and choose Properties. On the General tab of the dialog box that opens, drag the Priority slider, shown in Figure 26.4, to the right. The farther you drag, the higher your document's priority. Click OK. Your document won't stop the document that's currently printing, but it may well be the next one to print.

You can close the print queue as you would any other window — by clicking the Close button in the upper-right corner or by choosing Printer ⇒ Close from the menu bar. To get help with the print queue while it's open, choose Help from the menu bar.

Solving Common Printer Problems

If you experience a problem printing a document, the problem could well be something to do with the printer. Before you assume the worst and delve into any major troubleshooting, check for some of the more common problems that cause such errors:

• Is the printer turned on and set online?
• Are both ends of the printer cable plugged in securely?
• Is there paper in the printer, and is it inserted properly?
• Is there a paper jam in the printer?
• Does the printer still have ink or toner?

More often than not, you'll find that the printer problem is something as simple as the printer being out of paper or ink.

If there seem to be no issues with the printer itself, you can do some troubleshooting in Windows. Open the Devices and Printers folder, right-click the printer, and choose Troubleshoot, as shown in Figure 26.5. Windows 8.1 then runs through several troubleshooting steps to attempt to identify and fix the problem.

In some situations, Windows 8.1 will be able to identify the problem and fix it for you. In others, it will suggest a fix, as shown in Figure 26.6.

Printing Offline

Printing offline is a means of going through the process of creating the spool file for the printer without actually printing the document. There are times when this is useful, such as when you're working on a notebook computer with no printer attached but you intend to print later when you can attach the computer to a printer or connect to a network.

To make this work, open the printer's queue and choose Use Printer Offline from the Printer menu, as shown in Figure 26.7. The printer's icon will dim and show the word offline. You can disconnect the printer from the computer.

You can print any document while the printer is offline. Of course, the document won't actually print because the printer isn't connected to the computer. When you get back to the printer, connect the printer to the computer again. Open the Printers folder, right-click the printer's icon, and choose Use Printer Online. Any documents you “printed” while disconnected from the printer will start printing.

Creating XPS Documents

As an alternative to printing on paper, you can print to an XPS document. The XPS document looks exactly like the printed document will look, but it is a file rather than a sheet of paper. You can then e-mail that XPS document to other people. Or, if you have a website, let people download it from your site.

To print to an XPS document, start printing as you normally would. For example, choose File ⇒ Print from the program's menu bar. Or if you're in Internet Explorer, click the Print toolbar button. When the Print dialog box opens, choose Microsoft XPS Document Writer instead of your usual printer, as shown in Figure 26.8. Then click OK or Print.

Because you're printing to a file, a Save As dialog box will open. There you can choose the folder in which you want to place the file and give the file a name. Figure 26.9 shows a file named crimemap.xps located in the Documents folder about to be printed. Click Save.

The Save As dialog box closes. To verify that the document was printed to a file, open the folder you printed to. The file is closed so it will look like an icon (see Figure 26.10), but you can treat it as any other document. For example, double-click the icon to open it into the new Windows 8.1 Windows Reader app, as shown in Figure 26.11. Or, if you want to e-mail it to someone using an installed e-mail program, such as Windows Live Mail or Microsoft Outlook, right-click the icon and choose Send To ⇒ Mail Recipient.

Printing from Windows 8.1 Apps

Printing from Windows 8.1 apps isn't as straightforward as printing from standard (non–Windows 8.1) applications. Windows 8.1 apps don't have standard menu bars, or menu tabs from which to choose the Print command. For Windows 8.1 apps, you use the Devices interface from the Charms Bar to select a printer.

To print from a Windows 8.1 app, follow these steps:

1. Open a Windows 8.1 app, such as Maps.
2. Open the Charms Bar.
3. Click Devices. A list of printers and other printer-related options displays, as shown in Figure 26.12. These other options vary depending on the devices and applications installed on your computer. For example, Figure 26.12 shows three devices.

   

4. For the example here, we want to choose to print to a printer, so click the name of a printer installed on your computer. A screen similar to the one shown in Figure 26.13 appears. This screen varies depending on the printer options available.
5. Click Print to print the document. As the document prints, the Devices screen is removed from the screen, and you return to the Windows 8.1 app that you're printing from.

   

Wrap-Up

The typical printing scenario is that you choose File ⇒ Print from a program's menu bar, or press Ctrl+P, to print whatever document you're viewing at the moment. But as you've seen in this chapter, there's more going on behind the scenes, and there are things you can do to manage your print jobs.

• Every document you print is a print job, temporarily stored in a print queue.
• To open the print queue, double-click the printer icon in the notification area, or the printer's icon in the Printers folder.
• To manage print jobs in the queue, right-click any job and choose an option from the shortcut menu.
• To cancel all documents that are waiting to be printed, choose Printer ⇒ Cancel All Documents from the print queue's menu bar.
• To print to an XPS document rather than paper, start printing and get to the Print dialog box as you normally would, but choose Microsoft XPS Document Writer as the printer.
• To read an XPS document, open it in the new Windows Reader app.
• To print from a Windows 8.1 app, choose the Devices item from the Charms Bar, and then select the printer to print to.