Setting Printer Scheduling Prioritization and Other Options
The Advanced tab of the Printer properties dialog box provides most of the options you'll want to configure. You can use these options to configure your printer by completing the following steps:
Figure 12-19. Configuring the printer as necessary
1. Click Starts-Devices and Printers. In Devices and Printers, right-click the printer you want to configure and then select Printer Properties (not Properties).
2. In the Properties dialog box, select the Advanced tab, as shown in Figure 12-19.
3. Use the following options to optimize the printer configuration:
Always available and Available from
Printers are either always available or available only during the hours specified. Select "Always available" to make the printer available at all times or select "Available from" to set specific hours of operation. Print jobs sent outside the designated hours are held in the printer's queue until the scheduled use time. Priority
Print jobs always print in order of priority. Jobs with higher priority print before jobs with lower priority. Use the Priority box to set the default priority.
Driver
Shows the current driver being used for the printer. If you click the Driver list, you'll see a list of all printer drivers being used on your computer. See "Changing Printer, Scanner, and Fax Machine Drivers" on page 497 for more information.
Spooling options
The spooling options control whether and how a document is spooled to a hard disk before being sent to the printer. Spooling a document before printing allows applications to finish printing faster. To enable spooling, select "Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster." To disable spooling, select "Print directly to the printer." With spooling, select "Start printing after last page is spooled" if you want to ensure that the entire document makes it into the print queue before printing. Otherwise, select "Start printing immediately" if you want printing to begin immediately when the print device isn't already in use.
Hold mismatched documents
A mismatch can occur if a document tries to use a form or type of paper not currently available in a printer tray. Typically, printers will stop all printing and wait for the mismatch to be resolved. If you want the printer to hold mismatched documents rather than try to prevent them, select this option.
Print spooled documents first
Select this option to allow the printer to print jobs that have completed spooling before jobs in the process of spooling, regardless of whether the spooling jobs have higher priority. This helps to maximize printer efficiency by ensuring that documents that have started printing can finish printing without interruption.
Keep printed documents
Select this option to keep a copy of documents in the printer queue on the print server. If you're printing files that can't easily be recreated, you might want to use this option so that you can easily reprint a document without having to recreate it.
Enable advanced printing features
Select this option to allow the use of advanced printing options, if available, such as "Page order" and "Pages per sheet." If you encounter compatibility problems when using advanced options, you can disable the advanced printing features by clearing this checkbox.
Printing Defaults
Clicking this button displays the Printing Defaults dialog box, which you can use to specify defaults for paper sources, document sizes, color matching, print resolution, and more.
Print Processor
Clicking this button displays the Print Processor dialog box, which you can use to set the print processor and default data type for a printer. The print processor is the software component that tells your computer how to render the raw printer data. About the only time you may need to configure print processor options is when you are working with an older Unix printer. Separator Page
At the office, separator pages may be a requirement. To select a separator page to print before each document, click the Separator Page button. In the Separator Page dialog box, click Browse, scroll down, and then click Sysprint.sep if you have a PostScript printer or Pcl.sep if you have a PCL printer. Click Open and then click OK.
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