Occasionally, you might find that you must temporarily pause printing so that you can replace a toner cartridge, clear a paper jam, or perform some other maintenance procedure. To do this, click Printer in the print management window, and then select Pause Printing. You can resume printing later by clicking Printer in the print management window and then selecting Pause Printing again. The first selection toggles on the option, the second toggles off the option.

If you need to clear all documents out of the print queue, you can do this as well. Click Printer in the print management window, and then select Cancel All Documents. When prompted to confirm the action, click Yes.

Every document in the process of printing is shown in a print management window. In the print management window, documents are listed by the following information:

When you select a document in the print management window, you can manage it using the Document menu or by right-clicking in much the same way as you manage the printer itself. To stop the document from printing or to pause printing if it is currently being printed, right-click the document, and then select Pause. You can enable or resume printing later by right-clicking the document and selecting Resume. If you need to clear a document out of the print queue, right-click the document, and then select Cancel. When prompted to confirm the action, click Yes.

You can change a document's properties by right-clicking the document and selecting Properties. This opens the document's Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 29-41. To change a document's properties when it is in the process of printing, you should pause the print job first.

Figure 29-41. You can change the properties of documents in the print queue.

Typically, you might want to edit a document's properties to set its priority. For example, if someone printed a very long document and you want to ensure other documents print before it, you could lower the long document's priority. Similarly, if there's an important document that you want to be printed ahead of other documents, you can raise the document's priority.

Troubleshooting: Clear out stuck documents

The Print Spooler service is configured to restart automatically if there's a problem. Sometimes it won't completely freeze or it will hang up in such a way that it can't be restarted automatically. You can tell this because the print queue will have error documents that you can't clear manually. In this case, restart the Print Spooler service manually. In the Administrative Tools folder, select Services, and then select Print Spooler in the right pane. Rightclick Print Spooler, and then select Start or Restart as appropriate.