The Print Queue

Earlier, I mentioned that jobs sent to unavailable printers (if they're unavailable because of a schedule) will wait in the print queue. The print queue is where jobs stand in line before being serviced by the print device. By default, these jobs are deleted from the queue after they've been sent out a port to a waiting print device. This is useful behavior, as it keeps the queue from filling up with old documents, consuming unnecessary disk space.

At times, however, you might find it useful to keep jobs in the queue even after they have been sent to the print device. For example, if you have a problem with a print job that allows it to complete but not satisfactorily (the printer runs out of toner, for example), you have to open the application and resubmit the job. For particularly large documents and some applications, reprinting the job from the application could take several extra minutes.

As a safeguard, you could instruct XP to keep documents in the queue even after they've printed by following these steps:

1.	Open the Printers and Faxes folder from your location of choice. (I like to keep a shortcut to this on the Start menu.)
2.	Open the Properties dialog box for a selected printer and then click the Advanced tab.
3.	Click the "Keep printed documents" check box found near the bottom of the dialog box and then click OK.

Now documents will be saved even after printing. Keep in mind that this requires additional disk space and that you will need to manually remove documents from the queue after they are successfully printed. Easily done: right-click a job in the queue and choose Delete from the context menu.

Well, If It's Printing, It Must Be Using Invisible Ink

By the way, if the thing won't work, that is, if your document won't print, it's possible that it has become "stuck" in the print queue (though it's not physically stuck as the word implies, as could be the case were there a paper jam in the physical print device). Try opening the Services MMC snap-in from the Control Panel (or Administrative Tools), and then stop and restart the Print Spooler service. That seems to fix a lot of these types of printing problems.