Environment

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Your printing Environment page gives you a detailed view of your centrally managed printers so you can understand your overall printing system, ensure consistent printing results from different printers, and minimize the chance of downtime.

Use your printing Environment page to:

  • Consolidate drivers you use across your system.

  • Know which driver to install before beginning installation.

  • Upgrade multiple printers at once.

Go to Control Center > Printers > Overview to see an overview of Your Environment.

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Your Environment shows the number of Printers, Computers, Profiles, and Driver Packages in your system. Click the links to go to the associated pages.

Click Details to open your Environment page.

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Your Environment page shows a list of your centrally managed printers installed on connected computers. Each row represents one installed print queue.

Drag and drop column headers to group by one or more columns and refine your view. Columns include:

  • Printer manufacturer

  • Driver provider

  • Printer model

  • Printer

  • Computer

  • Print queue name

  • Printer type

  • Address

  • Print queue driver version

  • Driver package (Driver version)

  • Printer preferred driver package (Driver name)

Use the Environments page to get more information about your entire printing system and to avoid errors while maintaining, updating, and installing printers and printer drivers.

Consolidating printer drivers

Using different printer drivers in your printing environment may cause inconsistencies in your printing output. Use the Environment page to identify different driver versions on printers in your system so you can consolidate them into a single driver version for consistent printing results.

To consolidate your printer drivers:

  1. Go to Control Center > Printers > Overview > Environment.

  2. On your list, drag and drop the Printer model column header to group by printer model.

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  3. Under Print queue driver version, look for computers running outdated driver versions. Update the older printer driver so all your labels print consistently on all printers.

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  4. To update your driver, install your printer on any computers running outdated versions using the Install Printers wizard.

    1. Go to Control Center > Printers > Printers and click Install Printers. The Install Printers window opens.

    2. Select your printer with outdated printer drivers.

    3. Select computers using outdated printer drivers.

    4. For your Driver Package, select the newest driver package version. You see alerts that your drivers will update.

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    5. Install your printers with your upgraded driver package.

When your installation completes, all your printer driver packages are consolidated on printers of the same model in your environment.

[Tip] Tip

You can also upgrade all your printers using the same driver package by replacing your driver package. Go to Printers > Printers > Driver packages, select a driver package, and click Replace driver package. Read Driver Packages for more information.
Be certain when installing new printers

Installing new printers on multiple computers with other printers already installed can cause unintended effects. Installing a new print queue version updates all the print queues using that printer driver. Use the Environment page to know which driver package version to use for installation.

[Note] Note

Whenever possible, use 1 printer driver provider and 1 driver package version for all printers of the same printer family.

For example:

  • All Zebra printers in your environment use Loftware version 10 printer drivers.

  • All Sato printers in your environment use Loftware version 8 printer drivers.

  1. Go to Control Center > Printers > Overview > Environment.

  2. On your list, drag and drop the Printer manufacturer and Computer name column headers to group by those columns.

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  3. Under Print queue driver version, look for computers running different driver package versions on different computers for the same printers. You can:

    • Install a new printer for both printers. Depending on which printer driver version you choose, you also update other print queues on one or both computers.

    • Run the Install Printers wizard twice for each computer. Select the driver version that is already installed. No drivers update in this scenario.

[Note] Note

You can only install new printers with Loftware printer drivers. Installing new printers doesn't affect printers using drivers from other providers.