Within an office, multiple printers may be available on the network: before printing, therefore, we will have to choose the one closest to us or the printer suitable for the type of document or image we need to print: a printer can be reserved for quick printing, a another for official documents and another for high-quality photos. Whenever one has to print, one will have to make sure that the right printer has been selected for what to do.
In the home, however, where the printer is almost always one, the hassle of choosing the printer is the same because, from Windows 8.1 onwards, there is also the virtual printer to create PDFs in addition to the printer to print in the XPS format (already available from Windows 7).
In any scenario we find ourselves, we can speed up the choice of printer to always use by setting a default printer for the system ; in this way, if when we go to print, the management menu of our favorite printer will be immediately opened without having to select it every time.
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1) Change default printer in Windows 7, 8.1 and 10
The classic method to set a default printer is to open the Control Panel on the Windows system (any version still supported) and go to the Hardware and Sound menu -> Devices and printers ; once arrived in the menu we will see the list of printers, right click on the chosen printer and select the item Set as default printer .
A green dot will immediately appear next to the printer icon, a sign that it has been set as the default printer by the Windows system.
It is advisable to periodically check this menu, since the installation of other printers or virtual printers can change the setting in favor of other devices that we do not intend to make as default.
2) Set default printer on Windows 10
On the latest Microsoft operating system, namely Windows 10, there is another method to change the default printer.
Let's go to the Settings app (we can find it in the Start menu, as a gear icon on the left or as a separate app), click on the Devices item and then on the Printers and scanners menu.
Basically Windows 10 independently manages which printer to set as default, based on our choices; to prevent the system "from its head" we remove the check mark from the item Allow Windows to manage the default printer, left click on the printer we intend to use as default, select Manage and, in the new screen, finally click on Set as default .
The system will assign the printer chosen by us as the default for all apps with print mode, so as to avoid having to select it each time by hand.
In the Printers and scanners menu we can check the printer marked as default every time by checking for the presence of the Default item immediately under the printer name.
Also in this case, as seen above, it is advisable to often check the presence of our printer as the default, since the installation of programs or tools for managing virtual printers can cancel our choice and make us use different devices every time.
3) App to decide the default printer automatically for each program
On some company computers it may be very convenient to have programs that can decide, depending on the program used, the type of document or the extension, which printer to use, so as to significantly speed up work in an environment where there are multiple printers different.
To use, alternatively, multiple printers (real or virtual) depending on which program you are using to start a print job, you can use Automatic Printer Switcher.
For example, if you decide that you want to use Printer A to print a PDF document, Printer B that has photo paper for images and the virtual printer that converts to PDF for websites, you can preset this choice so you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Automatic Printer Switcher is a small free program that allows you to associate a printer with a specific program.
This tool must be started from the Start menu and left active in the system tray; when we get to the point where we have to print with a specific program (for example Word) we click on the Add Program button, we choose the printer and, finally, we press the " Add Mapping " button.
The various associations made appear in the list of the main interface and you can change them as you prefer or remove them.
For all programs not associated in the Switcher, the default printer from the general Windows settings applies.
4) Conclusions
We have seen how to set a default printer on all versions of Windows still supported and, in business scenarios, we have also shown you some useful programs to automatically choose the best printer based on the program used.
If we need to share a printer on the local network, to allow all employees to print, we recommend reading our guide to configure a network printer shared between PCs, where we can find all the steps to follow to transform any printer connected via USB to the computer in a printer available on the network (without necessarily connecting it to the modem).
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