Printing Preferences


You can configure printing options in the Printing Preferences dialog box. For some printers, advanced options are available. Refer to the documentation provided with your printer for a list of these additional features.

To access Printing Preferences

  • In the Print dialog box, click the Preferences button of the program you used to create the document.

Printing Preferences settings are maintained across different documents, so you can establish a standard output for all documents. Printing Preferences determine default print job settings, but you can override these defaults in the Print dialog box.

Using the Printing Preferences dialog box, each user can set different preferences for a printer. Because printing preferences are preserved for each user, preferences do not need to be reset each time the printer is used.

Using the Printing Preferences dialog box, you can print in reverse order, print multiple pages on a single page, or specify the number of copies to be printed. Windows XP Professional supports printing up to 9,999 copies of a document in one print job.

For more information about Printing Preferences, see Windows XP Professional Help and Support Center.

Print Queue Security Options

The level of access to a print job queue depends on a user s security permissions as shown in Table 11-1.

Users working with print queues include two groups:

  • Administrative users have Manage Printers and Manage Documents permissions. They have wide control over how the printer operates regardless of where the print job originates.

  • General users have Print permissions to view general printer information and to manage the documents that they send to the printer. They cannot control other users print jobs.

Table 11-1: Default Permissions for Printer Users

Task

Administrative User

General User

See all jobs.

Yes

Yes

Pause or resume printer operation.

Yes

No

Pause, cancel, reschedule, or redirect any job.

Yes

No

Pause, cancel, reschedule, or redirect own job.

Yes

Yes

Restart a job from the beginning.

Yes

Yes

View and change job settings such as priority or user notified on completion.

Yes

Yes

View form, paper source, page orientation, and number of copies.

Yes

Yes

Note 

Not all applications support the new common dialog box.

Scheduling Printing

Users with administrative permissions can establish print scheduling on the Advanced tab of the printer properties dialog box as shown in Figure 11-1.


Figure 11-1: Advanced tab in a printer properties dialog box

Users with administrative permissions can schedule printer availability, printer priority, and print job priority. Printer priority affects how print jobs reach print queues. Print job priority affects jobs already in a print queue. It does not affect how jobs arrive in a print queue.

Note 

Windows XP Professional gives you quick access to basic information about printers. Let the mouse pointer pause on a printer to display the printer name, status, and location, and the number of documents in its queue.

Printer Availability

Printer availability determines whether a printer is available always or only during selected hours.

Printer Priority

Printer priority determines the order in which a printer is chosen relative to other available printers. Printer priority must be set for logical printers that correspond to the same physical printer. Setting printer priorities for virtual printers that correspond to different physical printers has no effect.

Note 

A physical printer is the printer hardware that prints a document; a logical printer is a representation of that physical print device.

Important points to remember about printer priority:

To set printer priority

  1. Open Printers and Faxes, right-click a printer icon, and then click Properties.

  2. In the Properties dialog box, on the Advanced tab, enter a number in the Priority box.

Note 

To set printer priority, you must have Manage Printer permissions for the printer.

To set printer priorities for multiple virtual printers

  1. Add a virtual printer to a specific port.

  2. Add more virtual printers, by using different names for the physical printer you are emulating, until you have the number of virtual printers you need.

  3. Right-click a printer icon, click Properties, and in the Priority box, type or select a value.

  4. Repeat step 3 for other virtual printers that correspond to the same physical printer.

  5. Using Computer Management, establish distinct groups to which you intend to add users, and then assign each group to a printer.

  6. On each virtual printer s Security tab, add groups, and then set permissions and restrict access as needed.

For more information about setting printer priorities, see Windows XP Professional Help and Support Center.

Caution 

If a user is a member of two groups, and one group is denied access to the printer, the Deny setting overrides the Allow setting. It is recommended that you remove the Everyone group from the printer, instead of denying access to the Everyone group.

Users can install printers based on their group membership, which ensures that the users have the correct level of priority access to printers.

Print Job Priority

A user with administrative permissions can set the print job priority for a document. However, users who submit print jobs have administrative permissions for those jobs and can change the jobs priority in a print queue.

In a print queue, multiple jobs sent to the same virtual printer are affected by job priority. The printer prints the job with highest print job priority first, and then prints jobs in the order of submission. You can set job priority in a printer s property sheet, by using the Priority field on the Advanced tab.

Consider the set of jobs in the print queue shown in Table 11-2.

Table 11-2: Sample Jobs in a Print Queue

Job

Status

Priority

1

Printing

1

2

Spooled

10

3

Spooled

1

4

Spooled

10

5

Spooled

99

Assuming that no other jobs are submitted, and no administrator changes a job priority, the printer prints these jobs in the order shown in Table 11-3.

Table 11-3: Printing Priority for Jobs in Table 11-2

Order

Explanation

Job 1

Printing

Job 5

Highest priority

Job 2

First in queue of priority-10 jobs

Job 4

Highest priority of jobs remaining

Job 3

Only job remaining; lowest priority

To set job priority on an existing print job

  1. Open the print queue.

  2. Double-click to select a print job.

  3. On the General tab, move the Priority slider to set the print job priority.

Spooler Settings

Users with administrative permissions can configure print spooling by using the Advanced tab on the Printer Properties page. A print job can be sent to the spooler or directly to the printer. Jobs sent to the spooler can be configured to start printing as soon as possible, or after the final page in the job is sent to the spooler.

When you send a print job to a spooler, your computer does not have to render the print job, so the resources of your computer remain available. However, if the print server with the spooler is unavailable, sending the print job to the spooler fails. You might have to wait for other jobs to finish spooling before your job is processed.

If the spooler is configured to print each page as it is rendered, printing delays might occur between pages. If each spooler has many users, it is faster to have the entire job spooled before printing. If each spooler has few users, it is faster to print each page as it spools.

Note 

Spooling occurs on the print server for print jobs sent over the network and on the local computer when the printer is directly connected.




Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit 2003
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit 2003
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 338
BUY ON AMAZON

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net