Set Permissions on Network Printers

Once a printer is made available from a print server, default printer permissions are assigned. These default permissions allow the Everyone group (that is, all users) to print. Other select groups have the ability to manage the printer, manage documents sent to it, or both. But you might not want just any user to print to the shared printer. Instead, you might want to limit access for some users by assigning specific printer permissions.

For example, you might give all standard users in a department the Print permission and give all managers the Print and Manage Documents permissions. In this way, all users and managers can print documents, but managers can also change the print status of any document sent to the printer. Furthermore, by default the "Creator Owner" special group has the Manage Documents permission. This means that users can manage all documents that they own. For example, the owner of a document can send a job to the print queue and then cancel its printing if they change their mind.

This behavior is a departure from the behavior of NTFS and Share permissions, in which the Everyone group has the Full Control permission until an administrator tightens security settings. For this reason, you typically won't have to do much configuring of the security permissions of printers.

You control which users have access to a shared printer that you make available from your print server through the Security tab of the printer's Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 8-7. (See the sidebar in this section if you don't see the Security tab.)

Figure 8-7. The printer's Security tab.

To change the permission settings for a printer, you must have the Manage Printers permission, and then follow these steps:

1.	Open the Printers and Faxes folder, right-click the printer, and choose Properties from the shortcut menu to open the Properties dialog box for the selected printer.
2.	Click the Security tab and then click Add to open the Select Users Or Groups dialog box.
3.	In the space labeled "Enter the Object Names to select," do just that, separating the names with a semicolon. Click OK when you are done.
4.	In the Name box, type the name of the user or group for whom you want to set permissions.
5.	In the Permissions section, click the "Allow or Deny" check box for each permission as appropriate. Click OK to commit your permission changes.

What Security Tab? Have You Lost Your Mind?

If your Windows XP system is part of a domain, the Security tab is automatically displayed in the printer's Properties dialog box. However, if you are using Simple File Sharing and are operating in a Workgroup environment, Windows XP does not display the Security tab. To see whether you are using Simple File Sharing, look at the list of Advanced settings on the View tab of the Folder Options dialog box. You will need to make sure that the Simple File Sharing (Recommended) option is cleared in order to display the Security tab.