In this section:

Had a frustrating experience with a surly printer? This section of the book will guide you painlessly through the printing process. If you have multiple printers installed on your computer, we’ll show you how to designate one as your default printer—that is, the one you set up to automatically print all your documents—and how to target another printer when you can’t or don’t want to use the default printer.

We know you’ll welcome a great feature in Windows Vista—a wizard that makes it really easy to print your photographs. With just a few clicks, you can choose the sizes and orientation, the number of copies you want, and the way the pictures will be laid out on the page. If you’ve ever printed a Web page and been unhappily surprised by the chaotic result, you’ll appreciate the ability Internet Explorer gives you to print readable Web pages. We’ll also discuss creating and printing a document in the new universal XPS format, which makes it possible for your document to look exactly the same as it did originally even if you open or print it on a different computer. If you have a scanner, you can access it from the Windows Photo Gallery and directly scan and digitize just about anything. It’s easy and fun to do, and it gives you a great variety of images to add color and interest to your documents.

Printing from a Program

In most programs, you can print a document on any printer that’s installed on your computer or shared over a network. By using the Print dialog box, you can specify which printer to use and can customize the way your document is printed.

Print a Document

1. With the document open in its program, choose Print from the File menu to display the Print dialog box.

2. Specify the printer you want to use.

3. Click Preferences if you need to change the printer settings—for example, the size of the paper being used, whether the document is to be printed in color or in black and white, and so on. (Note, however, that sometimes the program’s settings will override your own settings.)

4. Click Find Printer to find and use a printer on a network that isn’t listed in the Select Printer section.

5. Specify the pages you want to print.

6. Specify how many copies of each page you want.

7. Specify whether you want multiple copies to be printed with the pages in order (collated) or whether you want each page to be printed multiple times before the next page is printed. (Collated printing is usually slower than uncollated printing.)

8. Click Print.

See Also

"Specifying a Default Printer" for information about setting a printer as the default printer.

Tip

The Selection option in the Page Range section of the Print dialog box tells the printer to print the text or the item that’s currently selected in the document. The Current Page option tells the printer to print either the page that contains the insertion point or the page that’s displayed.

Tip

If the Print command on the File menu isn’t followed by an ellipsis (...), the Print dialog box probably won’t be displayed, and the document will be printed on the default printer using the default settings.