Excel Annoyances

PRINTER MANAGEMENT ANNOYANCES

SET A DEFAULT PRINTER

The Annoyance:

I use a lot of color in my worksheets, but all my work ends up going to a black-and-white laser printer in the office next door. I wish I could send my worksheets to the color inkjet on my co-worker’s desk, but I don’t know how to make that happen.

The Fix:

You can choose your printer for each print job through the Print dialog box. To select a default printer, choose File → Print, click the down arrow at the right of the Name field, and select the printer from the Name drop-down list. As shown in Figure 7-39, you can see all the printers your computer has access to, whether directly (via a parallel or USB cable) or indirectly (over a network). Click the one you want, view its status (just so that you’re not surprised to find out someone’s currently using it for a 100-page report), and then go about your printing.

Figure 7-42. Pick a printer for the current print job. It will remain the default until you choose a new one.

To set a printer as your default (that’s the one Excel always goes to without your needing to select it), go to Windows’ Printers window (Start → Settings → Printers, or Start → Settings → Printers and Faxes, depending on your version of Windows). Right-click the desired printer, and choose Set as Default Printer from the pop-up menu (see Figure 7-40).

Once you set a printer as your Windows default, it will ...