How to Launch It
Control Panel Way
- Open “Administrative Tools” applet from the traditional Control Panel.
- Launch “Print Management” from the list of administrative tools.
Command Way
- Invoke Run window or Search Charm. Select the Settings tab in case of Search Charm.
- Type in the command “printmanagement.msc”, and hit Enter.
- The leftmost pane contains the main navigation tree. Everything Print Management has to offer is listed here – custom filter lists, print servers, deployed printers, etc.
- The middle pane provides a detailed description of whatever is selected in the leftmost pane.
- The rightmost pane gives contextual settings for whatever you select in the leftmost pane.
Custom Filters
If you have a lot of printers on network, then you may want to filter them through some criteria. For example, you frequently require a color printer for your art work. So you can create a filter to list those are color laser printers. The only thing you need to do to ask a printer from the custom list to print your desired artwork.
All the filters are listed in the left tree pane.
The right Actions pane provides you with the options to add a printer filter, driver filter, export the custom filter list to a text file, etc. The same actions can be accessed through a right-click context menu, too.
I have created a custom printer filter called “MyFilter”, which lists only those printers that have “XPS” in their name.
Selecting the filter in the tree lists the printers that meet the criteria, on the middle pane.
As shown in the Properties window of MyFilter, you can set multiple criteria for a filter. The criteria definition can be based on printer name, driver name and/or version, print server name, job names, queue status, location, etc.
Print Servers
A print server is a device that connects printers to client computers over a network. It accepts print jobs from the computers and sends the jobs to the appropriate printers. A print server may be an independent device, or it may be embedded in a printer. The Print Management tool lists all the print servers available in your network.
Each print server lists its components – its drivers, the form types that it can identify for printing, ports through which it can receive or server print requests and the printers that it identifies over the network.
Drivers of a Print Server
Form identified by the print server
Ports open in print server for printing purposes
Printers identified by the print server
You can add or remove print servers to the list, through the Actions pane (or context menu). You can also save the server list to a text file by exporting it.
You can directly type the server name, or browser through the network directory to locate it.]]>
