How do I print a .prn file

[Shawn Matlock]

My printer was down so I printed to a file. I expected to be able to
right-click and send it to the printer later. How do I print a *.prn file?

 

[Ghostrider]

My printer was down so I printed to a file. I expected to be able to
right-click and send it to the printer later. How do I print a *.prn file?

The old-fashioned way would be to run Command Prompt, type

"print [name of file.prn] > LPT1" (minus the quote marks)

and enter.

 

[Shawn Matlock]

Maybe I need to clarify. How do I print a .prn file to a USB printer? Does
it require special software or is it built into XP?

 

[Squire]

As long as your printer is the default printer,
You can copy any file to it, no matter what port is used.
Or if you have more than 1 printer, just select the one to use.

I use the following:
Copy (filename) prn, (or lpt1)

Be sure you are in the correct directory,
Jerry

 

[Shawn Matlock]

I might be doing something wrong but that didn't work:

copy ce.prn prn
copy ce.prn "lexmark x83"

both fail.

 

[Will]

My printer was down so I printed to a file. I expected to be able to
right-click and send it to the printer later. How do I print a *.prn file?

The old-fashioned way would be to run Command Prompt, type

"print [name of file.prn] > LPT1" (minus the quote marks)

and enter.

Someone said you can drag and drop the file onto the printer icon to print.
I have not tried that myself though.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

I might be doing something wrong but that didn't work:



both fail.

What's the error?

You can simply drag and drop, too.

Steve

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Shawn Matlock wrote:

My printer was down so I printed to a file. I expected to be able to
right-click and send it to the printer later. How do I print a *.prn file?

The old-fashioned way would be to run Command Prompt, type

"print [name of file.prn] > LPT1" (minus the quote marks)

and enter.

Someone said you can drag and drop the file onto the printer icon to print.
I have not tried that myself though.

I have, it does.

Steve

 

[Squire]

Are you able to print a test page, to see if the printer is working ?

 

[Shawn Matlock]

I did. It doesn't.

Shawn Matlock wrote:


My printer was down so I printed to a file. I expected to be able to
right-click and send it to the printer later. How do I print a *.prn file?



The old-fashioned way would be to run Command Prompt, type

"print [name of file.prn] > LPT1" (minus the quote marks)

and enter.

Someone said you can drag and drop the file onto the printer icon to print.
I have not tried that myself though.

I have, it does.

Steve

 

[Shawn Matlock]

No errors and drag and drop doesn't work.

What's the error?

You can simply drag and drop, too.

Steve

 

[Shawn Matlock]

The printer is working. I can print from any application.

Is there an associated application that is supposed to go with .prn files?

 

[Steve Nielsen]

And along the same line of thought... did you set the port for the
printe back to the USB port after the printer was fixed? If it's still
set to print to file you're just going in circles.

Steve

 

[Squire]

One other thought,
The .prn extension might be what is stopping the printer.
You might try renaming the file to a .bat extension.

 

[Ghostrider]

Maybe I need to clarify. How do I print a .prn file to a USB printer? Does
it require special software or is it built into XP?

Happiness is having a parallel-port (LPT) printer. Never
had an USB printer. Don't know what to tell you. You might
want to take a look in the printer's property box under
ports and see what name the computer had assigned to the
USB port. Then use the print command to print to that port
name. Good luck.

 

[Will]

The printer is working. I can print from any application.

Is there an associated application that is supposed to go with .prn files?

PRN might be PCL specific. I think only HP printers can understand it. OK,
I will stop guessing now.

 

[Rob Schneider]

I'm guessing that the *.prn file you are talking about is a file that
was created by "printing to file", e.g. the ouptput from the printer
driver was directed to a file instead of a printer.

The contents of this file will be whatever the printer driver made, e.g.
PCL format for an HP Printer, PostScript for PostScript printer, or
whatever for whatever printer. You have to find out (or remember) what
the format of the file is in order to then copy that file to the
appropriate printer for it to make paper.

Others in the thread have talked about how to copy the file to the
printer. I don't know how to do it to a USB-connected printer as I don'
know what the port is. For my HP Laser, I can direct output files to it
with:

copy /b a.prn lpt1:

The key point is to know the format of the file. The *.prn extension
means nothing and tells you nothign. It's just a file extension. I
could be anything. You have to know what format it is.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms