11.2. Printing Fortunately, the setup described so far in this chapter is a one-time-only task. Once it's over, printing is little more than a one-click operation. 11.2.1. Printing from Programs After you've created a document you want to see on paper, choose File  Print (or press Ctrl+P). The Print dialog box appears, as shown at top in Figure 11-3.  | Figure 11-3. Top: The options in the Print dialog box are different for each printer model and each application, so your Print dialog box may look slightly different. For example, here are the Print dialog boxes from Microsoft Word and WordPad. Most of the time, the factory settings shown here are what you want (one copy, print all pages). Just click OK or Print (or press Enter) to close this dialog box and send the document to the printer.
Bottom: During printing, the tiny icon of a printer appears in your notification area. Pointing to it without clicking produces a pop-up tooltip, like this one, that reveals the background printing activity. | |
This box, too, changes depending on the program you're usingthe Print dialog box in Microsoft Word looks a lot more intimidating than the WordPad versionbut here are the basics: -
 Name . If your PC is connected to several printers, or if you've created differently configured icons for the same printer, choose the one you want from this list of printers. -
Page range controls which pages of the document you want to print. If you want to print only some of the pages, click the Pages option and type in the page numbers you want (with a hyphen, like 36 to print pages 3 through 6).
Tip: You can also type in individual page numbers with commas, like 2, 4, 9 to print only those three pagesor even add hyphens to the mix, like this: 13, 56, 1318 .
Click Current Page to print only the page that contains the blinking insertion point. Click Selection to print only the text you selected (highlighted) before opening the Print dialog box. (If this option button is dimmed, it's because you didn't highlight any textor because you're using a program that doesn't offer this feature.) -
Number of copies . To print out several copies of the same thing, use this box to specify the exact amount. You'll get several copies of page 1, then several copies of page 2, and so on unless you also turn on the Collate checkbox, which produces complete sets of pages, in order. When you've finished making changes to the print job, click OK or Print, or press Enter. Thanks to the miracle of background printing , you don't have to wait for the document to emerge from the printer before returning to work on your PC. In fact, you can even exit the application while the printout is still under way, generally speaking. (Just don't put your machine to sleep until it's finished printing.) 11.2.2. Printing from the Desktop You don't necessarily have to print a document while it's open in front of you. You can, if you wish, print it directly from the desktop or an Explorer window in any of three ways: -
Right-click the document icon, and then choose Print from the shortcut menu. Windows launches the program that created itWord or Excel, for example. The Print dialog box appears, letting you specify how many copies you want and which pages you want printed. When you click Print, your printer springs into action, and then the program quits automatically (if it wasnt open when you started the process). -
If youve opened the Printers window, you can drag a document's icon directly onto a printer icon. -
If youve opened the printer's own print queue window (Figure 11-4) by double-clicking the Printers icon in your Printers window, you can drag any document icon directly into the list of waiting printouts. Its name joins the others on the list.  | Figure 11-4. The first document, called "Internet Security 3.0," has begun printing; the bottom one, you've put on hold. Several other documents are waiting. By right-clicking documents in this list, you can pause or cancel any document in the queueor all of them at once. | |
These last two methods bypass the Print dialog box, and therefore give you no way to specify which pages you want to print, nor how many copies. You just get one copy of the entire document. |
