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Can I move print jobs from one printer to another?

I have multiple printers that I use, depending on my location (it's on my Mac laptop) and sometimes I forget to check printing devices before I queue up a print job. Usually I just leave the job to print when I get back to that location, but isn't there some way to move print jobs from one printer to another in Mac OS X?


Dave's Answer:

There is, and once I show you how to do it, you'll marvel at how simple Apple's made something that in other operating systems is extraordinarily complicated. I've set up a similar situation on my computer, queueing up a print job called "Mail * Dave". When I look at that particular printer (its icon is in my Taskbar), it looks like this:

Mac OS X: Stopped Print Job

Look familiar?

Now, that's the stopped printer and the job we want, it's time to open up the target printer. That's done by launching the Printer Setup Utility, which you can find in your Applications --> Utilities folder. It'll look like this:

Mac OS X: Printer Setup Utility

I have three printers I use, actually, but the one I want to use to redirect this particular print job is called "LJ2100TN @ Home". To get to that specific printer, I just double-click its name in the list and see a similar window for the printer without any jobs listed, of course:

Mac OS X: Printer Active

Now, finally, we have both the stopped printer and the active printer on the screen. To redirect the print job all you need to do is literally drag and drop the job from one window to the other:

Mac OS X: Printer Copying Print Job

Within seconds the job will be printing on your local printer and the offline printer will have nothing left in its queue. Neat, eh?



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Comments

What's the easiest way of doing this on Windows?

Posted by: matt cook at January 20, 2008 8:20 PM

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