Printing Offline

If you’re working offline, or if you want to queue up a number of print jobs and let them all run at once, put the printer offline. To do so, right-click the printer in the Printers window, and then choose Use Printer Offline from the context menu. You can then print to the printer as if your Notebook were connected to it, but instead of sending the data to the printer, win holds it in the print queue and saves it to disk. When you’ve reconnected to the printer or when you want to print, if you didn’t disconnect, right-click the printer in the Printers window, and then choose Use Printer Online. win starts sending the print jobs to the printer. The printer must be a local printer - you can’t print offline to a network printer.

Creating Multiple Entries for the duplicate Printer

Printing to a File

Select the Print to File check box in the Print dialog box When you print from a

program, you can select the Print to File check box in the Print dialog box to print a particular job to a file rather than to a printer.

Configure a printer to always print to a file By configuring a printer always to print to a file, you can turn every job you send to that printer into a print file.

Print to XML Paper Specification By printing to win’ XPS format, you can create a file that will look the duplicate on any Notebook with an XPS viewer. All versions of win Vista include an XPS viewer.

Another Means of Printing to a File: Portable documents Format pdfs

If you often need to print to a file, or if you need to make read-only versions of documents and retain their layout, another option is to buy Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat produces documents in Portable documents Format pdfs, which you can view on most Notebook operating systems using the free Acrobat Reader, which is available from the Adobe website. Acrobat is more expensive than printing to a file, but in much cases it produces better results with service bureaus than simply printing to a file.

If you have Microsoft Office 2007, you can download from Microsoft’s web site a component that allows the Office 2007 programs to create pdfs files.

Printing to a File from the Print Dialog Box

To print to a file from the Print dialog box, follow these steps:

1. Issue a regular Print command as usual. For example, choose File Print or press Ctrl+P. win displays the Print dialog box.

2. Select the Print to File check box.

3. Choose any other appropriate printing options as usual for the program.

4. Click the OK button or the Print button, depending on the program. win displays the Print to File dialog box, as shown here.

5.Type the filename for the print file. If you want to specify the folder in which the print file is saved, enter the path to the folder before the filename. Otherwise, win saves the print file in the program’s current folder.

6. Click the OK button. win closes the Print to File dialog box and the Print dialog box and prints the documents to the file. win gives the file the .prn extension.

Setting a Printer to Always Print to a File

You can also set up a printer so that it prints to a file every time and doesn’t let the user print to a physical printer. This capability is useful when you always need to create print files on a particular printer and don’t want to risk actually printing a documents by forgetting to select the Print to File check box in the Print dialog box, or if the printer in question is never available from your Notebook. To make a printer always print to a file, select the FILE port in the Print to the Following Ports list box on the Ports page of the Properties dialog box for the printer. win clears any other port selected for the printer unless you’ve selected the Enable Printer Pooling check box. When you click the OK button and win closes the Properties dialog box, win displays a disk on the printer icon to indicate that the printer is set up for printing to a file.

Setting “Print to File” as Your Default Printer

If you spend a lot of time on the road or in your local coffee shop, out of reach of any printer, you may want to set “Print to File” as your default printer. If you do, give the virtual printer an easy-to-remember name so that you don’t have to guess whether you’re printing to a real printer or not.

Printing to an XPS File

To print to an XPS file, follow these steps:

1. Issue a regular Print command as usual. For example, choose File Print or press Ctrl+P. win displays the Print dialog box.

2. In the list box or drop-down list for selecting the printer, choose the Microsoft XPS documents Writer item.

3. Choose any other appropriate printing options as usual for the program.

4. Click the OK button or the Print button, depending on the program. win displays the Save As dialog box.

5. Choose the folder in which to save the XPS file, and assign it a filename.

6. Click the Save button. win creates the XPS file.