Managing Printing Preferences

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Printing preferences are the instructions that tell each printer how to print labels. Printing preferences include settings for printing media like media size, media type, and rotation. Printing preferences may also include more printing settings (like speed and darkness) depending on your printer model.

With Printer Management, you can update printing preferences for all your installed printers instantly in Control Center. When your printer operators want to update settings, they don't need access to computers or any additional system permissions to change printing preferences. You can give printer operators permission to edit printing preferences for specific printers, computers, driver packages, or printer profiles in Control Center. When your printer operators log in to Control Center and update printing preferences for their printers, the changes take place immediately and reduce printing downtime.

To manage printing preferences, go to Printers > Printers and click on a Printer name to update. The Printer page opens:

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Use the tabs (on your top left) to update your printer settings, then click Save all to apply your updates:

  • Summary: view and update general printer information.

    • Under Printer information, edit the fields to update your Printer name, Description, Group, and Preferred driver for this printer to use for setting printing preferences and future installations.

      If your preferred Loftware drivers are version or newer, you can update printing preferences directly in Control Center. If you choose to use older preferred driver versions, you may not be able to change your printing preferences directly in Control Center without DEVMODE.

    • Click the link under Installed on to view computers with print queues for this printer.

    • Under License, check if your printer is licensed and/or reserved. For more information, read Licensed printers.

  • Settings: choose how to manage printing preferences for your printer.

    • Toggle Centralized settings to save your centrally-managed printing preferences in Control Center or locally on your printer or label.

      Now, when you print on centrally managed printers from Control Center, you can instruct your printer to use printing preferences stored in Control Center. If you still have printing preferences stored in your label or locally on the computer that sends the print command, you now have the option to override those preferences and apply the preferences stored in Control Center instead.

    • Use shared settings profile. Applies settings from the shared printer profile you choose from the drop-down list to your printer. For more information, read Profiles.

    • Use printer-specific preferences. Configure printing preferences like print speed, darkness, offsets, and more for your printer directly in Control Center. Available settings depend on your printer model and printer driver version. Some driver versions require adding printing preferences with DEVMODE.

      Set your preferred printer driver to the latest version to use printer-specific preferences.

  • Status: view your current printer status including availability and errors.

  • Print queues: view queues statuses and pause, resume, clear, and delete print queues for your printer.

Managing your printers centrally in Control Center helps you install, monitor, and update your printers and settings from one place.

Managing Printing Preferences with DEVMODE
[Note] Note

To centrally manage your printing preferences directly in Control Center with a GUI, use Loftware printer drivers version or newer.

Older printer driver versions have no GUI support in Control Center, but you can still import and share printing preferences for your printers by downloading the Get Printer Settings utility for free from our Loftware utilities page. This method allows you to set your printing preferences directly on your Loftware printer driver installed on your computer, copy these settings with Get Printer Settings, and paste your preferences into Control Center. When you paste your preferences into Control Center, you can apply them to specific printers or printer profiles to share on multiple models of the same printer.

Get Printer Settings is a simple utility for extracting printer settings from WIndows for printers you select and saving those settings to file or providing settings in the GUI. This structure is called DEVMODE. DEVMODE is a binary data structure that includes all settings available in the printer driver. For more information, see Understanding Printer Settings and DEVMODE topic in Automation User Guide

Control Center applies your stored printing preferences in DEVMODE at print time. When computers send print commands to centrally managed printers, Control Center replaces the printing preferences computers send with print their commands with the DEVMODE printing preferences stored in Control Center. You can edit printing preferences directly in Control Center with a GUI editor if you use Loftware version printer drivers or newer. Older printer drivers require raw DEVMODE strings.

To use printer-specific preferences with older Loftware printer driver versions:

  1. If you want to install new printers, add your preferred version of the printer driver package you want to use for setting printing preferences to Control Center. If you're not installing new printers, you can add DEVMODE printing preference strings without uploading driver packages or setting a preferred driver.

    To avoid potential printing errors, make sure the driver package version you upload matches the driver package you have downloaded on your computer where your printer is installed. This is the printer driver you use to generate DEVMODE strings.

    We recommend updating the driver on your computer with the latest version of your printer driver from our driver downloads page and uploading the same version to Control Center to set as your preferred driver. You use your preferred driver to install and manage preferences for multiple printers of the same model in your environment.

  2. On the computer where your printer is installed with your Loftware printer driver, go to Windows > Settings > Printers & scanners.

    1. Select the printer you want to update and click Manage.

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    2. The printer page opens. Click Printing preferences.

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  3. The Printing Preferences page opens for your Loftware printer driver. Use the tabs on your left to navigate and update your preferences for this printer. The preferences you will choose act as a template for other printers in Control Center.

    [Note] Note

    Available printer preferences depend on your printer driver version.

    Click OK to save your updated printing preferences.

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  4. Download the free GetPrinterSettings utility .zip package from https://www.loftware.com/customer-center/downloads/nicelabel-utilities.

    1. Extract and run GetPrinterSettings.exe. The Get Printer Settings window opens.

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    2. Select your printer from the dropdown list.

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    3. Click Get Printer Settings to generate your DEVMODE text string of saved printing preferences. Click Copy to Clipboard to copy your string.

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  5. In Control Center, go to Printers > Printers and click the Printer name of the printer to update. The Printer page opens.

  6. Under Printer Information > Preferred driver, choose your uploaded driver version as your preferred driver from the dropdown list.

  7. Open the Settings tab.

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    1. Activate Centralized settings.

    2. Select Use printer specific preferences.

    3. Under Printing preferences (DevMode), paste your DEVMODE string.

    4. Click Save all.

Your printing preferences from your printer driver are saved in Control Center.

Using DEVMODE Printing Preferences in Profiles

Use the same process to add DEVMODE strings of saved printing preferences to new printer profiles. Apply your saved DEVMODE printing preferences to multiple printers of the same model in your environment by adding your printers to the profiles you create.

Create your profile following the instructions on Profiles:

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  1. Add your Printer Information.

  2. Use GetPrinterSettings to paste the Printing preferences from your printer driver on your computer as a DEVMODE string.

  3. Click Save to create your profile.

Your printing preferences are saved in your new printer profile. You can now add printers of the same make and model to this profile to apply your printing preferences when you print. For more information, read Profiles.