It’s one thing to buy a printing device, connect it and install all the necessary drivers, and another thing is to solve the problem of how to set up a printer’s printing. In general, in this case, you will not need any special knowledge and skills, because setting up a printer is a process that can be performed by any user of office equipment. For this purpose, carefully read the instructions below, which will definitely help you configure the properties of the printer or mfp as you need it.
detailed instructions
- To answer the question on how to set up a printer for printing, first click on the “Start” menu and open the “Control Panel”.
- Go to the section called “Printers and Devices” – it may have a slightly different name depending on the version of Windows installed on your personal computer, for example, Printers and Faxes in Windows 10.
- Find your device icon and open its properties. To display the “properties” just click on it and in the left part of the taskbar that opens, click on the corresponding item.
- To make the setting really optimal, go to the “Forms” tab, where you have to choose one of the standard templates for printing, for example, A3, A4, etc. If necessary, you can not only make changes to the existing template, but also create your own.
- Now you have to configure the port. Go to the corresponding tab in the same device properties window. There will be a list of printer ports that you can delete and change. Add a new one if necessary.
To further solve the problem related to how to set up a printer for printing, you have to right-click on the desired device and click on the appropriate item in the context menu that opens. But in Windows 10, for this purpose, you should left-click on the selected device, then click on “Control” and select “Settings” on the left side of the displayed window. Then follow these steps:
- So, setting up your printing device, first of all, pay attention to the tab called “Basic”. There you need to set such a characteristic as print quality (for example, higher or standard), as well as determine the page orientation (book or paper) and the type of print.
- Now open the tab called “Paper”. There, to solve the problem of how to set up a printer, you need to decide on the number of copies and scaling. But note that the enlargement or reduction function will not work in Eco mode! In the section with paper parameters, you have to select its type, namely: paper or envelope.
- Click on the “Graphics” tab. There you first need to decide on the font and text. If you are interested in the answer to the question of how to configure the printer to print only in black, then select “Print all text in black”. In some models (for example, Canon), to make black and white text, you need to open the properties of the device and go to the “Additional settings” tab. There you need to select “Print in black / in grayscale”, and then click on “Apply”.
- In the same “Graphics” tab, check or uncheck the “Sharp edges” option as you like, and select the optimal toner saving and density settings. In the latter case, decide between normal, light and dark. It is thanks to this parameter that you can solve the problem related to how to adjust the brightness of the print. It is very useful if the original document contains dark / dim areas of the image. But in Canon devices, first you need to select “Manual” on the “Home” tab – in the color / intensity section. After that click on “Set” and set the brightness to light / normal / dark.
- With regard to saving colorant, it is preferable to leave the “Detected by printer” selected.
- If you want to impose a watermark or some text on the printout, then feel free to go to the “Advanced” tab and select the options you need. With these settings, you will be able to make your printouts truly original. In addition, through this same tab, you can control the order of printing documents and manual duplex printing.
- Open the properties again by right-clicking on the desired device and select the appropriate item. After that go to the “General” tab and click on the “Test Print” button. At the end, wait for the printed piece of paper.
Some possible problems and how to solve them
Often, users are faced with the fact that the program, when sending a document to print, selects a completely different device. To solve this kind of problem, you need to install the newly configured default device. In this case, the question may arise about where to find the settings for this? In this case, follow these steps:
- Open the section with printers and other devices installed on your personal computer.
- Find the icon of the required printing device and open its context menu.
- From the list that opens, click on the “Use as default” item.
It also happens that users of printing office equipment, after making the settings, are faced with the following task: the printer parameters could not be saved. To fix a similar problem, try first to print a test page on your device – how to do this has already been mentioned above. If all else fails, then make sure that the icon for your device is actually displayed in the section with printing devices. If it is not there, then reinstall the drivers and reboot.
Another way to solve this problem is to roll back the system to the date when your device was printing normally. You can even try deleting all printers except the current one. Of course, the likelihood that this will help is very scanty, but still such an action can be a way out of your situation. Also, check your local drive for errors. If none of the above helped you, then it is best to reinstall the operating system and do not be lazy to create a backup for the future.
Thus, setting up printing on personal computers running different versions of Windows is not such a problematic task. Most importantly, you need to know what print results you want to achieve in order to change the settings for the parameters you really need.