It may happen that the laser printer in our office or the inkjet printer in the home does not have enough ink to print our important documents in color, therefore limiting us to print only the most important pages or to give priority only to the really important documents. If we found ourselves in this situation, we can still print everything without postponing the print job but only making black and white prints, even if there are color pages; in this way we will be able to print everything at a faster speed and complete the task without wasting time replacing the cartridge or color toner.
In fact, in this guide we will show you how to print in black and white using the tools made available by the PC and the various programs that we use daily when dealing with documents.
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How to print in black and white
To print a document or image in black and white we can act both from the print menus offered by the operating systems for computers and mobile devices and act within the various programs, so that we can choose from time to time the best method in according to our needs.How to print in black and white on Windows
On Windows we can print in black and white by directly setting the printer in use, so as to "force" the use of the black cartridge and ignore the use of the color cartridges; in this way any program we use will print in black and white without distinction.To achieve this we open the Start menu in the lower left and open the item Printers and scanners (on Windows 10). In the new page that appears, click on the printer to be used, press on Manage and then on Printing preferences ; from here we go to the Paper / Quality tab and activate the Monochrome item.
We click Apply and OK below to make the changes effective.
If instead we use Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 (but we can also replicate the steps on Windows 10 if necessary), it is possible to print in black and white by opening the Start menu, looking for and opening the Control Panel, selecting the Hardware and Sound menu and then by clicking Devices and Printers . From the window that opens, right click on the printer we intend to use, select Printing Preferences and make the changes as seen above (by going to the Paper / Quality tab and activating the Monochrome item).
How to print in black and white on Mac
If we use an iMac or a MacBook to create or view the documents, we can print them in black and white in a very simple way by opening the document with the specific program and using the keyboard shortcut CMD + P (alternatively we can always open the File menu in up and use the Print item).In the new window that will appear, set the printer with which to print in the drop-down menu next to the Printer item and put the check mark on the Black and white item, present next to the Copies field.
Starting the printing process, the Mac in our possession will print in black and white; if we don't see the Black and White button appear in the print window, click on Show details at the bottom, select the item Media and Quality and activate the grayscale support, so that we can print correctly in black and white.
How to print in black and white from programs
If we do not want black and white printing to involve all the programs on our computer, we can also apply this change to the individual software that we use; below we have collected the procedures for making a black and white print on Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat Reader, LibreOffice Writer, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.To print in black and white on Microsoft Word (or any other Office suite program), simply click on the File menu at the top, select the Print menu, highlight the printer to be used and finally select the Printer Properties item, so as to open the print configuration menu of your operating system.
To print in black and white on Adobe Acrobat Reader we use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + P or go to the menu File -> Print, make sure that our printer is present in the Printer field then we put the check mark on the item Print in grayscale (black and white), present just below the Properties button.
To start printing in black and white on LibreOffice Writer (and on any other program of the open source suite), use the shortcut CTRL + P or go to the path File -> Print, select the printer to use in the list shown and click on the Properties button, to open the configuration screen of the operating system in use.
To proceed with the black and white printing on Microsoft Edge (the browser integrated in Windows 10), press on the keyboard CTRL + P and, in the window that will appear, check if there is our printer at the top of the page then scroll until you find the item Other settings, from which we can set the print in black and white.
To create a black and white print on Google Chrome (the most used web browser on PC), press the now known shortcut CTRL + P on the keyboard and, in the print window that will appear in the center of the screen, make sure that our printer in the Destination field then choose the Black and white item from the drop-down menu next to the Color item.
How to print in black and white on smartphones or tablets
If we want to create black and white printing from our smartphone or tablet, just follow the simple steps described below, taking care to have already configured the printer on Android and iOS mobile devices .To print in black and white from Android smartphones or tablets we open the app menu (the three dots or the three horizontal lines), select the Share button and press the Print button (on some apps the print button may be available as an item in its own right). In the screen that appears we expand the upper section by tapping on the arrow pointing downwards, then set Black and white in the drop-down menu under the heading Color .
To print in black and white from iPhone or iPad we tap the Share button (arrow-shaped inside a square) and press the Print button; in the new screen we select the printer to be used in the Printer field, then activate the Black and white item which will appear among the options.
Conclusions
If the color ink has run out or we want to print a large quantity of sheets, it is preferable to print our documents in black and white, so as to obtain a high printing speed by losing very few details (especially if the documents contain a lot of text). With the suggestions proposed in this guide we will succeed in Nintendo with any program and on any operating system!If we want a very high print speed when printing in black and white, we recommend you read our guide on What are the Fastest Printers .
If we are undecided about what to take between a laser or inkjet printer, we can take many doubts away with our Guide to buying a printer: laser or ink "> Save ink and printer cartridges .
