Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours
- Table of Contents
- Copyright
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- Tell Us What You Think!
- Introduction
- Part I: Wake Up with Windows XP
- Hour 1. Taking a Bird's-Eye Look at Windows XP
- Hour 2. Getting Started with Windows XP
- Hour 3. Managing the Windows XP Interface
- Part II: Morning Windows Desktop Exploration
- Hour 4. Working with the My Computer Window
- Hour 5. Navigating Files with Windows Explorer
- Hour 6. Calling for Help
- Hour 7. Improving Your Windows Desktop Experience
- Part III: Early Afternoon Windows Exploration
- Hour 8. Installing Programs with Windows XP
- Hour 9. Finding Files, Folders, and Friends
- Hour 10. Using the Desktop Accessories
- Part IV: Late Afternoon Internet Integration
- Hour 11. Surfing the Web with Internet Explorer
- Hour 12. Tying Windows into the Web
- Hour 13. Networking with Windows XP
- Hour 14. Managing E-mail and Newsgroups with Outlook Express
- Part V: An Evening with Advanced Windows
- Hour 15. Exploring Your Hardware Interface
- Hour 16. Understanding Printing and Fonts
- Hour 17. Using Windows on the Road
- Hour 18. Giving Windows XP a Tune-Up
- Hour 19. Managing Your Hard Drives
- Hour 20. Tinkering with the Advanced System Tools
- Part VI: Having Fun at Nighttime
- Hour 21. Using Media Player
- Hour 22. Picturing Windows XP Graphics
- Hour 23. Making Movies with Windows XP
- Hour 24. Advanced Windows XP Tips
- Part VII: Appendixes
- Appendix A. Differences Between the Windows Home and Professional Edition
- Appendix B. Glossary
- Appendix C. Answers to Quizzes
Printing Tips
Windows adds advanced printer support that enables you to manage the documents you send to the printer. As you probably know, you can begin printing a second (or more) document even before the first one finishes printing. Windows stores the output in memory and on disk until all the documents are printed. Have you ever sent two or three long documents to the printer and then wished you could cancel the first one? You can, as the next tip shows.
Manage Printer Jobs
As soon as you select Print, Windows sends the output to the print queue. The print queue is a temporary file that resides partially in memory and partially on disk. The print queue holds the document or documents that you've sent to the printer but have not finished printing yet.
From the time you issue a print command to the time the document is completely printed, Windows displays a printer icon on your taskbar. If you double-click that icon, the printer window appears.
The printer window tells you which jobs are printing and what their status is, including the number of pages printed for the current job. If you change your mind and want to cancel a job that's started or one that has yet to start, right-click over the job's name and select Cancel printing.
Rearrange print jobs when you want to move a more important job up in the queue. Drag a job up or down to change its priority and printing order.
Cancel All Print Jobs Easily
Sometimes you might want to cancel all your print jobs. No problem. Just select the printer window's Printer, Purge Print Documents option to remove all jobs from the print queue.
Multiple Users Should Print Separator Pages
If you share a networked printer with others in an office setting, make sure that you've specified a separator page for your networked printer. A separator page prints before or after every print job. If several people print at the same time, the separator pages help you determine where one print job begins and ends.
The separator page can contain text, but if you select a large graphic image (the image must end in the graphics file extension .wmf), you can more easily locate the separator page when sorting through a list of printed output.
Miscellaneous Tips | Next Section
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