Managing Installed Printers at User Workstations

Novell® Printer Manager allows users to manage installed printers from their Windows* 95*, Windows NT*, and Windows 3.x workstations.

The following sections describe how to perform several important printer management tasks from user workstations:


Customizing Configurations at a User Workstation

After a printer is installed, users can use the printer configurations that the administrator creates or they can customize them to meet their specific printing needs. They may modify any properties of an existing configuration that are not locked by an administrator.

For example, users can install a printer named Progress Report and modify its configuration so that it will automatically print three copies of the report with a banner page preceding the job.

In Novell Distributed Print ServicesTM (NDPSTM), a printer can have multiple configurations. Configurations can be created in three ways:

Users can use the printer configurations that the administrator creates or they can customize them to meet their specific printing needs. Users may modify any properties of an existing configuration that are not locked by the administrator. This procedure is described below.

  1. From the main Novell Printer Manager window, select the printer you want to modify.

  2. From the Printer pull-down menu, select Configuration.

    The Installed Printer Configuration dialog for that printer appears.

  3. Select the tab(s) corresponding to the types of properties you wish to view or modify.

  4. Select the properties you want from these tab pages and click OK.

For a complete list of features you can modify in a printer's configuration, see Printer and Job Configuration Options.


Viewing Printer Information at a User Workstation

To view information about a specific installed printer, users should follow this procedure:

  1. From the Novell Printer Manager window, select the desired printer.

  2. From the Printer pull-down menu, select Information.

    The Printer Information dialog shows the current status and state details about the printer you chose.

    Information about the following items also is shown in this dialog:


Changing the Driver for an Installed Printer

Occasionally you may need to change the driver originally selected for a printer already installed on a workstation. For example, the manufacturer may have updated the driver, or you may want to substitute a PostScript* driver for a non-PostScript driver. For non-English-speaking workstation users, you may want to substitute drivers in the correct language for the default English drivers.

You can change the driver for an installed printer either through the Novell Printer Manager Configuration / Drivers tab page or through the Printers folder in Windows 95 or Windows NT by selecting the printer's Properties page and changing the driver there. If the driver you want to install is not currently in the NDPS Resource Management database, you will need to have it available on a diskette or copied onto your hard drive (if it requires more than one diskette) before you begin.

NOTE:  NDPS ships with only English-language drivers. For information on adding additional drivers such as those in different languages, see Adding or Updating Printer Drivers.


Removing an Installed Printer from a User Workstation

The Novell Printer Manager can be used to remove an installed printer from a workstation in the following way:

  1. At the main Novell Printer Manager window, select the printer you want to remove.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • Select Remove from the Printer menu.
    • Press the Delete key.

The following sections describe other important workstation management features of NDPS.