Lately, I’ve heard a lot of people gripe about printing problems. One person wanted to know how to make the printer stop after he printed something accidentally. Later, I was talking to one client who is incensed at how much ink it takes to print out a Web page. A few days later, another client was distressed because every time he goes to print a Web page, the right hand side gets cut off.
It seems no one is immune to printing problems. I know I’m not. But all of these problems have possible solutions. You may just need to explore the print options of your printer a little more thoroughly. Unfortunately, the options depend on your printer, so like the old saying goes, "your mileage may vary."
However, with that caveat in mind, here are a few places to look for solutions to your printing woes.
If you printed a document by accident, it’s easy to stop it. When a document prints, you’ll see a little printer icon on your Taskbar that you can double-click. Alternatively, choose Start|Settings|Printers and Faxes and double-click the printer icon. You’ll see a window with a list of files being printed. Choose Printer|Purge Print Documents.
However, here’s something a lot of people don’t understand. You can cancel a print job on your computer and the printer still won’t stop. Why? Because when you print, first the print information goes to your hard disk and then it is "spooled" to the printer. Canceling the job cancels it from spooling to the printer. But if the job is already at the printer, it’s in the printer’s memory. To clear the job out of the printer’s memory (and stop wasting paper), press the printer’s "cancel" button, or simply turn the printer off.
If you have a color printer and print Web pages, it can be less expensive to print them in black and white. That way you only burn through the black cartridge, instead of all the cartridges. To find this option, click the Properties button in the Print dialog box. You’ll generally see an option for Black and White (sometimes it’s called grayscale). While you’re in there, you may also notice the quality settings. To save ink, you can lower the quality to "draft" or whatever the lowest quality setting is called.
You also can save paper, ink, and squeeze more of a Web page on printed page by changing the "scaling" of the printout. By default, a printer is set to 100%. In the Print dialog box, click Properties. Then click the Advanced button. For some printers, you’ll see an option for Scaling. Set that down to 80% to fit a wide Web page. Some printers also have options to fit the output to one page or print multiple pages on one sheet. Try changing it to print 2 or 4 pages on a sheet. The type may be small, but it will probably still be readable.