Chapter 8
In This Chapter
Printing and scanning from the Start menu’s apps
Printing files, envelopes, and web pages from the desktop
Adjusting how your work fits on a page
Troubleshooting printer problems
Occasionally you’ll want to take text or an image away from your PC’s whirling electrons and place it onto something more permanent: a piece of paper. This chapter tackles that job by explaining all you need to know about printing. Here you find out how to make that troublesome document fit on a piece of paper without hanging off the edge.
You discover how to print from the Start menu’s gang of apps as well as from the desktop’s programs.
I explain how to print just the relevant portions of a website — without the other pages, the ads, the menus, and the printer-ink-wasting images.
And should you find yourself near a printer spitting out 17 pages of the wrong thing, flip ahead to this chapter’s coverage of the mysterious print queue. It’s a little-known area that lets you cancel documents before they waste all your paper. (I explain how to set up a printer in Chapter 12.)
If you prefer to turn paper into computer files, this chapter closes with a rundown on the Windows Scan app. When combined with a scanner, it transforms maps, receipts, photos, and any other paper items into computer files.
Although Microsoft now tries to pretend that Start menu apps and desktop programs are the same, apps often behave quite differently than traditional desktop programs.
Many of the apps can’t print at all, and those that do allow printing don’t offer many ways to tinker with your printer’s settings. Nevertheless, when you must print something from a Windows app, following these steps ensures the best chance of success:
From the Start menu, load the app containing information you want to print.
Cross your fingers in the hopes that your app is one of the few that can print.
Click the app’s Settings icon or More icon to see the drop-down menus.
A click on these three striped lines, known informally as the hamburger menu, fetch a drop down menu. (This drop-down menu sometimes replaces the Charms bar’s icons found in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.)
Similarly, a click on an icon of three dots (shown in the margin) found in some apps also fetches a drop-down menu. (The three dots menu is sometimes known called a more menu, because it brings you more options.
On a tablet running in Tablet mode, bring a full-screen app’s menu into view by sliding your finger down from the tablet’s top edge.
When you click Print from the drop-down menu, the app’s Print menu appears, similar to the one shown in Figure 8-1. (If the word Print is grayed out, that app isn’t able to print.)
Click the printer to receive your work.
Click the Printer box, and a drop-down menu appears, listing any printers available to your computer. Click the name of printer you want to handle the job.
Make any final adjustments.
The Printer window, shown earlier in Figure 8-1, offers a preview of what you’re printing, with the total number of pages listed above. To browse the pages you’re about to print, click the Previous or Next buttons above the preview.
Not enough options? Then click the More Settings link. The Pages per Sheet setting lets you shrink several pages onto a single sheet of paper, which is handy for printing multiple small photos on a color printer.
Click the Print button.
Windows shuffles your work to the printer of your choice, using the settings you chose in Step 4.
Although you can print from a few apps, you’ll eventually run into limitations:
Most apps can’t print. You can’t print a day’s itinerary from your Calendar app, for example, or even a monthly calendar.
In short, although you can print from a few apps, your results will be quick and dirty. Desktop programs, described in the rest of this chapter, usually offer much control over printing jobs.
Built for power and control, the desktop offers many more options when it comes to printing your work. But that power and control often mean wading through a sea of menus.
When working from the desktop, Windows shuttles your work to the printer in any of a half-dozen ways. Chances are good that you’ll be using these methods most often:
If a dialog box appears, click the OK or Print button, and Windows immediately begins sending your pages to the printer. Take a minute or so to refresh your coffee. If the printer is turned on (and still has paper and ink), Windows handles everything automatically, printing in the background while you do other things.
If the printed pages don’t look quite right — perhaps the information doesn’t fit on the paper correctly or it looks faded — then you need to fiddle around with the print settings or perhaps change the paper quality, as described in the next sections.
In theory, Windows always displays your work as if it were printed on paper. Microsoft’s marketing department calls it What You See Is What You Get, forever disgraced with the awful acronym WYSIWYG and its awkward pronunciation: “wizzy-wig.” If what you see onscreen isn’t what you want to see on paper, a trip to the program’s Page Setup dialog box, shown in Figure 8-2, usually sets things straight.
Page Setup, found on nearly any desktop program’s File menu, offers several ways to flow your work across a printed page (and subsequently your screen). Page Setup dialog boxes differ among programs and print models, but the following list describes the options that you’ll find most often and the settings that usually work best:
When you’re finished adjusting settings, click the OK button to save your changes. (Click the Print Preview button, if it’s offered, to make sure that everything looks right.)
When you choose Print from many programs, Windows offers one last chance to spruce up your printed page. The Print dialog box, shown in Figure 8-3, lets you route your work to any printer installed on your computer or network. While there, you can adjust the printer’s settings, choose your paper quality, and select the pages (and quantities) you’d like to print.
You’re likely to find these settings waiting in the dialog box:
Select Printer: Ignore this option if you have only one printer, because Windows chooses it automatically. If your computer has access to several printers, click the one that should receive the job. If you have a fax modem on your computer or network, click Fax to send your work as a fax through the Windows Fax and Scan program.
The printer called Microsoft XPS Document Writer sends your work to a specially formatted file, usually to be printed or distributed professionally. Chances are good that you’ll never use it.
Just realized you sent the wrong 26-page document to the printer? So you panic and hit the printer’s Off button. Unfortunately, many printers automatically pick up where they left off when you turn them back on, leaving you or your co-workers to deal with the mess.
To purge the mistake from your printer’s memory, follow these steps:
To see your printer’s icon, you may need to click the little upward-pointing arrow to the left of the taskbar’s icons next to the clock.
When you choose your printer’s name, the handy print queue window appears, as shown in Figure 8-5.
Your printer queue can take a minute or two to clear itself. (To speed things up, click the View menu and choose Refresh.) When the print queue is clear, turn your printer back on; it won’t keep printing that same darn document.
You can send items to the printer even when you’re working in the coffee shop with your laptop. Later, when you connect the laptop to your printer, the print queue notices and begins sending your files. (Beware: When they’re in the print queue, documents are formatted for your specific printer model. If you subsequently connect your laptop to a different printer model, the print queue’s waiting documents won’t print correctly.)
Although information-stuffed web pages look awfully tempting, printing those web pages is rarely satisfying because they look so awful on paper. When sent to the printer, web pages often run off the page’s right side, consume zillions of additional pages, or appear much too small to read.
To make matters worse, all those colorful advertisements can suck your printer’s color cartridges dry fairly quickly. Only four things make for successfully printed web pages, and I rank them in order of probable success rate:
The new Microsoft Edge web browser in Windows 10 is built for speed, not power, but it still prints. To print what you’re viewing in Edge, click the browser’s More icon (three dots in the top right corner), and choose Print from the drop-down menu.
If you spot an E-Mail option but no Print option, e-mail the page to yourself. Depending on your e-mail program, you may have better success printing it as an e-mail message.
When you can’t print something, start with the basics: Are you sure that the printer is turned on, plugged into the wall, full of paper, and connected securely to your computer with a cable?
If so, try plugging the printer into different outlets, turning it on, and seeing whether its power light comes on. If the light stays off, your printer’s power supply is probably blown.
If the printer’s power light beams brightly, check these things before giving up:
Does your inkjet printer still have ink in its cartridges? Does your laser printer have toner? Try printing a test page: From the desktop, right-click the Start button and choose Control Panel. From the Hardware and Sound category, choose Devices and Printers. Right-click your printer’s icon, choose Printer Properties, and click the Print Test Page button to see whether the computer and printer can talk to each other.
Finally, here are a couple of tips to help you protect your printer and cartridges:
Don’t unplug your inkjet printer to turn it off. Always use the On/Off switch. The switch ensures that the cartridges slide back to their home positions, keeping them from drying out or clogging.
When you’re tired of fiddling with your scanner’s built-in software, turn to the simple scanning app bundled with Windows 10. Dubbed simply Scan, the new app doesn’t work with older scanners, unfortunately. But if your scanner is relatively new, the Scan app is a refreshing change from complicated scanner menus.
Windows 10 dropped the Scan app that graced Windows 8 and 8.1. However, you can download it for free from the Store app. (It’s called Windows Scan in the Store.)
Note: Setting up a new scanner for the first time? Be sure to unlock it by sliding a lever or turning a dial on the scanner to the unlock position. That lock protects the scanner during shipping, but you must turn it off before use.
Follow these steps to scan something into your computer:
From the Start menu, open the Scan app.
If you don’t spot the Scan app on the Start menu, click the words All Apps in the Start menu’s bottom-left corner. The Start menu lists all of its apps alphabetically. Note: If you don’t find the Scan app on your computer, you can download it for free from the Store app.
Click the Scan app, shown in the margin, and the Scan app appears on the screen. If it complains that your scanner isn’t connected, make sure you’ve connected the USB cord between your computer and the scanner and that the scanner is turned on.
If your scanner’s plugged in and turned on, the scan app list your scanner’s name, shown in Figure 8-6, and the file type used for saving your files. (The PNG file type is widely accepted by most programs.)
If the app doesn’t recognize your scanner, your scanner is too old. You’re stuck with your scanner’s bundled software — if it works — or, unfortunately, buying a new scanner.
(Optional) To change the settings, click the Show More link.
The app’s default settings work fine for most jobs. The Show More link offers these options for specific types of scans:
Click the Preview button to make sure your scan appears correct.
Click the Preview icon, shown in the margin, and the Scan app makes a first pass, letting you preview a scan made with your chosen settings.
If the preview doesn’t look right, make sure you’ve made the right choice for your job in Color Mode, described in the preceding step. If the preview shows a blank white page, make sure you’ve unlocked the scanner as described in the scanner’s bundled instruction sheets.
If you’re scanning a smaller item that doesn’t fill the entire scanner bed, look for the circle markers in each corner of the preview scan. Drag each circle inward to surround the area you want to copy.
Click the Scan button. When the scan finishes, click the View button to see your scan.
The Scan app scans your image with the settings you’ve chosen in the previous steps and then saves your image in your Pictures folder’s Scan folder.
The Scan app works well for fast, easy scans. But because it relies on the simple, built-in Windows software, your scanner’s built-in control buttons won’t work.
If you want the buttons to work or you need finer control over your scans, skip the Scan app, head for the desktop, and install your scanner’s bundled software. (On some scanner models, Windows Update installs the scanner’s bundled software automatically as soon as you plug in the scanner.)
Finally, for quick and dirty scans, just take a picture of the document with the camera built into your phone or tablet. That won’t work well for photos, but it’s a great way to keep track of receipts and invoices.