Mac OS X - Printing

| Print Center | Print Dialogs |

Print Center

The 'Print Center' application (located in the 'Utilities' folder that is inside 'Applications') has replaced the Chooser as a means of setting up and managing printers in Mac OS X. We recommend adding the Print Center to the dock for easy access, since it comes in handy when troubleshooting printing problems.

The default printer will appear with a boldface name. Switching the default printer is as simple as selecting the one you want and clicking the 'Make Default' button. To add a printer, click the 'Add' button. You will be presented with a window similar to the following:

The top popup menu allows you to select how your computer will communicate with the printer. For printers directly connected to your computer, this will most likely be 'USB', while for networked printers it is easiest to use 'AppleTalk'. The content of the box will change depending on what connection method you have selected. Once you have selected a printer, you can choose printer make and model from the popup menu(s) below the list or in some cases it will let you 'Auto Select' and the computer will identify the printer and its features.

Once you have a printer set up, you can change the name to something more friendly without affecting the printer itself. For example, a network printer may be named 'ITS Davee HP4100dtn' on the network, but you could rename it so it appears as 'ITS Office printer' when you go to print a document. This is done by selecting the printer from the list of printers and choosing 'Show Info' from the 'Printers' menu, then changing the name in the window that appears:

It is also worth noting that the Print Center application will automatically launch when you print a document. If there are no problems, it will quit by itself.

If there are printing problems, the print spooler may stop that printer's print queue. This will generally be accompanied by an alert message. The Print Center application will display a status message next to the printer with the problem in its list of printers. Double-clicking on the printer will bring up the queue for it.

Once you have corrected the problem with the printer, you can click the 'Start Jobs' button to resume printing.

Printing Dialogs

Print dialog windows are more consistent in Mac OS X than in previous versions of the Mac OS. You can switch between different printers from any print dialog, even printers that are directly connected to your computer (previously you could only switch between laser printers).

Every print dialog has the option for previewing the printed page as well as saving your document as an Adobe PDF file (without the need for Acrobat writer).

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