multiple printer printing in XP

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Ratedr

SORRY SO LONG I JUST WANTED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF FULLY:
I run a company that sends orders out to my factory's networked order
printer. Sometimes my factory foreman seems to tell me orders never
made it out there..that I KNOW got out there...or sometimes I think I
wrote something, and I didnt...OR even sometimes I wrote an order up
wrong, so what I want to do is the following. I want to be able to
send a document to the printer in the factory as well as the same
document to a printer here in my office so that I can A. know that the
order DEFINATELY got printed (since I will have a copy), B. be able to
know what orders are still out there and match up incoming orders with
the sheet I have here, and C. I can be in my office, and look at an
order, see its wrong, and run out ot the factory fix it before it makes
it to the finished product, etc. Is there a program that can either
print to two printers at the same time, OR create something that will
print to the second printer once the first printer is finished..OR last
and worst case scenario, print to file and printer at same time. I
dont want to have to click print twice, etc and take the chance of more
human error
 
Don't know how you could solve your problem with nothing more than a remote
printer because there is really no way to "prove" that a file was actually,
physically printed.

With the cost of PCs today, why not put a networked $200 computer at the
printer site and attach the printer to it. Then you could do just about
anything such as install satellite software for order control or print
control. Being that the remote PC is nothing more that a remote print
server or remote software server, auto printing and control could be at a
very basic level that any novice could handle. A limited capability PC at
the remote site would offer many more options for controlling the order
process.
 
One more thought -

One other question you might ask or research is related to the physical
remote printer itself. Is there a network printer that responds to your PC
and indicates that a file was physically printed? If a network printer will
give you the validation you need, it might be cheaper/easier to just replace
the printer with one that has some good validation features. You want one
that does an accurate job. Some kind of log would also be helpful because
you could then check on the status of all the print jobs you sent to the
printer with their individual status. In other words, you might look at a
different printer that offer the validation and proof-of-print options you
need.
 
I have a remote computer that I am running my file through to get to
the networked printer. Neither of the two physical printers that I
want to use are actually attached to MY computer, they are both
connected to networked computers. You mentioned something about
satellite printing software..does the fact that they are all networked
computers help?
 
Ratedr said:
SORRY SO LONG I JUST WANTED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF FULLY:
I run a company that sends orders out to my factory's networked order
printer. Sometimes my factory foreman seems to tell me orders never
made it out there..that I KNOW got out there...or sometimes I think I
wrote something, and I didnt...OR even sometimes I wrote an order up
wrong, so what I want to do is the following. I want to be able to
send a document to the printer in the factory as well as the same
document to a printer here in my office so that I can A. know that the
order DEFINATELY got printed (since I will have a copy), B. be able to
know what orders are still out there and match up incoming orders with
the sheet I have here, and C. I can be in my office, and look at an
order, see its wrong, and run out ot the factory fix it before it
makes it to the finished product, etc. Is there a program that can
either print to two printers at the same time, OR create something
that will print to the second printer once the first printer is
finished..OR last and worst case scenario, print to file and printer
at same time. I dont want to have to click print twice, etc and take
the chance of more human error
Click to expand...


Would something like this work for you? Have the program that prints orders
print them to a prn file. Then use a batch file to print the prn file to
both printers, then delete the prn file.

But bear in mind that no matter what you do, you would still not know
definitely that the document was printed on the second printer. It could be
out of paper, powered off, jammed, etc.
 
It would give you more options because you have 2 computers talking to each
other and one is controlling the printer.

A no cost solution you could try with very little effort might be the
following. Look at www.software995.com and specially their PDF995 product.
You download it to your PC. When you write a file, PDF995 appears on the
printer list. When you select and print to the PDF995 printer, a PDF file
is generated. You can have it saved automatically into a folder on the
remote PC. Instead of your foreman looking for hardcopy orders, he could
look for the PDF files and print them using Adobe Reader which is also a
free download from Adobe.

If it were me, I would print the PDF file to a folder called "Orders to
print" on the remote computer. This is the folder your foreman would check
periodically just as he checks the printer. I would instruct him to print
any file in the Order to print folder. Once the file is printed, he would
move the PDF file to a folder that is also on the his remote PC called
"Orders printed". The 2 folders would be shared so you could check the
location/status of any PDF file. You can name the PDF file anything you
want at the time they are "printed" which would give you more information
when checking file status of the 2 folders.

This is a very simple and, no-cost solution. Not the most sophisticated but
a simple process to control. If the process works and you want something a
little more sophisticated, you could look into some print control software
that you could probably find through a google search. Again, if it were me,
I'd try the approach I outlined above because it's pretty low risk and has
no cost associated with it. It also puts more of the responsibility and
accountability in the hands of the foreman (which is where it belongs). If
the PDF file is still in the Orders to print folder, he didn't do his job
and you know it. If it's printed twice, he didn't move it to the Orders
printed folder. If a job sits in the Orders to print folder too long,
you'll know it and you can question it. This gives you a lot of control and
it's a simple process to adjust if you need. Again, this is using
everything you have now at no cost. Hope this helps.
 
One other comment -

What I gave you in the last post was a process. Really what you're doing is
implementing a process using available tools. Once the process is in place,
you can then either keep the existing tools (which is what I would do) or
add more sophisticated tools. The process and making sure that it works is
the most important part of what I outlined. You have a bigger problem if
your foreman isn't going to do something as simple as check for files in a
folder, print the files in the folder and then move the files to a second
folder. The process is pretty simple and it gives you everything you need
to control the process.

There is one additional benefit to the new process and that is
time-sensitive control - was the file printed within the time you expected.
In your current process, the file might be printed, but you don't know when
your foreman looked at it. In the new process, you know when the foreman
saw the order based upon when the file was moved from the "to be printed"
folder to the "printed" folder. If it was moved, the foreman saw the order
and printed it. If it sits in the to be printed folder too long, you would
know that your foreman isn't even aware of the order yet and you can call
him. Once moved from one folder to the other, there is no question of when
he saw it. In your current process, even if you had proof that the order
was printed, an order could sit on a printer without your foreman being
aware of it and without you knowing when he saw it. The new process let's
you know that the foreman is aware of the order regardless of when it's
printed. The accountability is his and you can monitor and question when
appropriate. Lots of information, control and good order status - not just
print status.
 
Mr. Blake. How would I set it up to do this? Dont know much about
batch files, and then how would I make it print to BOTH printers
without physically having to load the batch to one printer, then change
the printer and go to the other printer?
 
Ratedr said:
Mr. Blake.
Click to expand...


No formality is necessary. Just "Ken" is fine.

How would I set it up to do this? Dont know much about
batch files, and then how would I make it print to BOTH printers
without physically having to load the batch to one printer, then
change the printer and go to the other printer?
Click to expand...


Assuming you wrote the order to a file called order.prn in the root folder
of your C: drive (that's not a particularly good place for it, but I'm using
it for illustrative purposes), the batch file would look something like
this:

copy c:\order.prn address-of-your-local-printer
copy c:\order.prn address-of-your-remote-printer
del c:\order.prn

Create a text file with the above three lines (supplying the appropriate
printer addresses), save it as someplace as printorders.bat, and put a
shortcut to it on the desktop. Change the orders program to print to a file
called print.prn. After running the order program, just double-click the
batch file shortcut on your desktop and the file will be sent to both
printers, and then deleted.

I should mention, though, that this assumes that both printers are the same
model, since the file you print to has to be created with the appropriate
printer driver. If the printers are different, this won't work.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup



 
Ratedr said:
Mr. Blake. How would I set it up to do this? Dont know much about
batch files, and then how would I make it print to BOTH printers
without physically having to load the batch to one printer, then
change the printer and go to the other printer?
Click to expand...


Another thought just came to me. What program are you using to print the
orders? If it's a word processing program like Microsoft Word or
WordPerfect, perhaps the easiest and best solution would be to write a macro
in it to print the document twice, once to each printer.
 
yes its word..but as you can imagine, there is no way I would even
come close to knowing how to write that macro...anyone reading this
have any idea? I will try the other idea in the meantime
 
Ken... :)
I did the following
wrote a bat file printorders.bat as so:
copy c:\order.prn \\3MACHINECONTROL\UPS
copy c:\order.prn \\UPSCOMP\UPS Thermal 2543
del c:\order.prn

then I wrote my orders file to print to file called order.prn in the C:
drive
then I ran printorders.bat

but nothing happened just a doslike screen popped up and disappeared
 
Ratedr said:
yes its word..but as you can imagine, there is no way I would even
come close to knowing how to write that macro...anyone reading this
have any idea? I will try the other idea in the meantime


Another thought just came to me. What program are you using to print the
orders? If it's a word processing program like Microsoft Word or
WordPerfect, perhaps the easiest and best solution would be to write a macro
in it to print the document twice, once to each printer.
Click to expand...
There are several other newsgroups where you might get some help on
writing Word macros. If you can't get the batch file approach to work, try
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.word.vba.beginners
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.word.vba.general
Click to expand...
 
Ratedr said:
Ken... :)
I did the following
wrote a bat file printorders.bat as so:
copy c:\order.prn \\3MACHINECONTROL\UPS
copy c:\order.prn \\UPSCOMP\UPS Thermal 2543
del c:\order.prn

then I wrote my orders file to print to file called order.prn in the
C: drive
then I ran printorders.bat

but nothing happened just a doslike screen popped up and disappeared
Click to expand...


Then the printer address aren't correct.

I think you'd be much better off with the macro solution anyway.
 
Ratedr said:
yes its word..but as you can imagine, there is no way I would even
come close to knowing how to write that macro...anyone reading this
have any idea? I will try the other idea in the meantime
Click to expand...


I'm a WordPerfect user myself, and am far from a Word expert, so I couldn't
begin to tell you how to write a Word macro. But I think this will be your
best solution. If nobody here can help you, explain what you want done in a
Word newsgroup, and someone should be able to help you there.
 
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