Printer Properties Dialog

The General tab provides basic information about the selected printers. On this tab, you can also print test pages and display the printer's Printing Preferences dialog.

The following options are available:

• Printer Name: Specifies the name of the selected printer. If multiple printers are selected, the printer names are separated by commas. Read-only when multiple printers are selected.

• Location: Specifies a user-defined description of the printer's location.

• Comment: Specifies a user-defined comment about the selected printer.

• Model: Displays the printer model. Read-only.

Features

• Color: Indicates whether color printing is supported. Read-only.

• Double-sided: Indicates whether double-sided printing is supported. Read-only.

• Staple: Indicates whether the printer supports a stapling feature. Read-only.

• Speed: Displays the printer's print speed. Read-only.

• Maximum Resolution: Displays the printer's maximum resolution. Read-only.

• Paper Available: Displays a list of available paper sizes. Read-only.

• Printing Preferences: Opens the printer's Printing Preferences dialog. Available only for singly selected local printers.

• Print Test Page: Prints a test page on all of the selected printers.

Use the Sharing tab to share the selected printers across the network. The following options are available:

• Share this printer: Makes the selected printers available to remote computers on the network.

• Share Name: Specifies the preferred display name for the printer when it is viewed on remote computers. Printer Maestro selects the printer name as the default share name. Read-only when multiple printers are selected and the default share names are used.

• List in Active Directory: Lists the printer as a resource in the network's Active Directory directory.

• Additional Drivers: Specifies that you can install additional drivers for the printer. This may be helpful if other users are running different versions of Windows. Available only for singly selected local printers.

Use the Ports tab to select the ports that are used to communicate with the printer. By using this tab, you can add ports, delete ports, and configure existing ports. Available only for singly selected printers.

The following options are available:

• Ports list: Specifies the port that you want to use to communicate with the printer.

• Add Port: Opens the Windows Printer Ports dialog, which you can use to add a new port to the list. Available only for local printers.

• Delete Port: Removes the selected port from the list. Available only for local printers.

• Configure Port: Specifies that you can modify the selected port's configuration. Available only for local printers.

• Enable bidirectional support: Enables bidirectional communication between the printer and the client computer. If you make bidirectional support unavailable, many features of the driver may also be made unavailable, such as Read Printer Information and Status Monitoring.

• Enable printer pooling: Specifies that you can spread your printing output across several printers.

Use the Advanced tab to make changes to several advanced printing features, including printer scheduling and print spooler behavior. The following options are available:

• Always available: Specifies that the selected printers are available at all times.

• Available from: Specifies specific hours of operation for the selected printers.

• Priority: Specifies the default priority for print jobs from 1 (lowest) to 99 (highest). Print jobs are always printed in order of priority.

• Driver: Specifies a different installed driver for the printer. Available only for singly selected local printers.

• New Driver: Installs a new driver for the printer. Available only for singly selected local printers.

• Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster: Spools the print job based on one of the following selections:

  • Start printing after last page is spooled: Spools an entire document before printing begins. This option ensures that the entire document is added to the print queue before it is printed. If printing is cancelled or not completed, the job is not printed.

  • Start printing immediately: Specifies that when the printer is not in use, a document starts to be printed as soon as a print job is received. This option is preferable when you want print jobs to be completed faster or when you want to ensure that the application returns control to users as soon as possible.

• Print directly to the printer: Specifies that the job bypasses the spooler and is printed directly to the printer when a print job is sent.

• Hold mismatched documents: Specifies that the spooler holds those print jobs that do not match the configuration for the print device. We recommend that you use this option if you frequently change the printer stock or tray assignments.

• Print spooled documents first: Specifies that jobs that have completed spooling are printed before jobs that are in the process of spooling, regardless of a print job's priority.

• Keep printed documents: Saves a copy of a document in the printer after it is printed. We recommend that you use this option if you are printing files that cannot easily be re-created.

• Enable advanced printing features: Specifies that you can use advanced printing options if they are available for the selected printer. If you notice compatibility problems when you use the options on this tab, we recommend that you turn off the advanced printing features by clearing this check box.

• Printing Defaults: Opens the printer's Printing Preferences dialog. Available only for singly selected local printers.

• Print Processor: Specifies that you can modify the default print processor. Available only for singly selected local printers.

• Separator Page: Specifies a separator page. Separator pages can be used at the beginning of a print job to make it easier to find a document on a busy print device. They can also be used to change the print device mode, such as whether the print device uses PostScript or Printer Control Language (PCL). Available only for singly selected local printers.

The Security tab displays the current security settings for the selected printers. If you have the appropriate permissions, you can make modifications to these settings. For more information about security settings and their interactions, refer to the Windows documentation.