Change printer default to ‘current page’ instead of ‘all pages’

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Have tried Googling this topic, searched this forum, Printer properties and Printer preferences and thus far have not been able to find a way on how to change a printer default setting from all pages to current page. Is this a conspiracy by the paper companies and printer manufacturers to maximise our consumption of paper and cartridges?
I find it highly annoying when doing research and say reading through a 200 page document (PDF, Word etc) but only require the odd reference page as I find information, only to discover when I print the page I was too deep in thought about the research topic to realise I had not selected ‘current page’ and then print out 199 wasted pages.
Would really appreciate any assistance on the this thorny issue.

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Printer drivers are to allow you to print documents, so the default is print everything. You will just have to be careful.

cheers, Paul

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Have you thought about clicking cancel when you realize that it’s printing the whole thing, and then going back and select what page you want?

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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Hi guys, I appreciate your responses, however, I am not a newbie and have often interrupted a mistaken print instruction after realising my mistake. That is specially easy at home with a slow printer where switching off the printer at arms reach is often the only remedy as the job is already residing in printer memory.
Where this is more annoying is in the office environment where the printers are generally much faster and are not located at arms length and by the time you realise your mistake and try and cancel print it is long gone and spewing wasted paper somewhere in the building. Unfortunately this mistake is also often made by others in that environment.
While it is not necessarily my responsibility to be anyone else’s conscience it goes against my “green” anti waste life philosophy when confronted with a clearly wasteful default mode: – accidentally sending one page when 200 are required, is infinitely less wasteful than accidentally sending 200 when only one is required.
Was just hopeful that someone on the Lounge Forum may have come across a solution to this problem.

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Maybe something here:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2007-word/how-to-change-printing-default-to-current-page/dcc78146-74c2-4dc0-91e7-12f321b39e39
I’d think the issue is what can be done in programs rather than for the printer defaults in Windows.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Printer defaults are not set by the printer but by the applications you use to send data to the printer. To change the defaults would thus require changing the behaviour of every application you use – and that’s only possible for programs that either have such settings you can change or whose print options can be programmed. In Word, for example, you might use code like:

Code:

With Application.Dialogs(wdDialogFilePrint)
  SendKeys "%e"
  .Show
End With

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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For Word only, why not create a Macro with the following statement:

Application.PrintOut FileName:=””, Range:=wdPrintCurrentPage, Item:= _
wdPrintDocumentContent, Copies:=1, Pages:=””, PageType:=wdPrintAllPages, _
ManualDuplexPrint:=False, Collate:=True, Background:=True, PrintToFile:= _
False, PrintZoomColumn:=0, PrintZoomRow:=0, PrintZoomPaperWidth:=0, _
PrintZoomPaperHeight:=0

Then assign it to a new button and, maybe, hide the usual Print button ?

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I just copy info I want and send in a email to myself. then use my browser printer.That way no waste.

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Printer defaults are not set by the printer but by the applications you use to send data to the printer. To change the defaults would thus require changing the behaviour of every application you use – and that’s only possible for programs that either have such settings you can change or whose print options can be programmed.

I just copy info I want and send in a email to myself. then use my browser printer.That way no waste.

Because of what Macropod explained, my practice is similar to Tripper. I copy bits into a scratch pad in my text editor, and print from there when I’m ready.

Tarren, your desire makes complete sense. You would think a printer driver would be capable of [or at the very least, customizable to] having the default state set, and then resetting the printer to said state after each print job [which might change the defaults temporarily for its own needs] has completed.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Maybe not what you need, but it might help: on the job we have common departmental printers where you can define a password in the driver. When you hit the print button, your document is sent to the printer, but no paper comes out of it unless you physically go there, select your document(s), and give in your password. If you sent a document by accident, you can also delete it from the printer without printing it.
We used to have Canon before and now we’re on Ricoh. Both have that option.

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It would be very helpful if you would tell us what the make and model of the printer and its accompanying software that you are using. I have never found a printer that would not allow selective printing.

In any case, no matter what you are printing do not use the printer icon in the menu bar. Go to File >Print of the program that is displaying what you want to print and from there the printer’s print qualities dialog box should open and you can make your selection from somewhere in that box.

Were you using Adobe Reader?

[*]Make sure the page you want is visible
[*]Go to File >Print.
[*]In the Print dialog box, click current page.

If not what PDF program do you use?

Here’s how to do what you want if you only want a certain portion of a page: Print portion of a page | Acrobat, Reader.

Related:
Basic printing tasks | Adobe Acrobat X Pro

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I have never found a printer that would not allow selective printing.

That’s not what the OP said. He wants the default for printing set to “Current page”, so erroneous clicks don’t launch 200-page print jobs. It’s happened to all of us, I imagine.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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I have never found a printer that would not allow selective printing.

That’s not what the OP said. He wants the default for printing set to “Current page”, so erroneous clicks don’t launch 200-page print jobs. It’s happened to all of us, I imagine.[/QUOTE]I realize that is not what the original poster (OP), tarren wanted, that’s why I started my post with:

It would be very helpful if you would tell us what the make and model of the printer and its accompanying software that you are using. I have never found a printer that would not allow selective printing.
[/quote]A part of my post you decided to leave out.

There are settings in some printers software that you can set the default to print the current page, but until tarren supplies the information on what printer and software version for that printer he is using we can go no further.

That’s why I wrote the workaround below my opening paragraph.

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You’re asking for a function that makes sense, on its surface. Why shouldn’t a printer configuration be settable to a default state other than what the printer manufacturer or Microsoft establishes?

However, this desired function is contradictory to how Windows printing is currently designed.

The printer manufacturer/Microsoft expectation is that when you direct your program to print, the next step is to tell the program what to print. Your expectation is that when you direct your program to print, that it will print what you want it to print. This time, you may want it to print the current page, but next time you might want the whole document. How will the program know which print range you want? Remember, hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of other people will be using the same type of printer and will have different requirements every time they print.

While the “remember my last printer settings” function might work for you most or all of the time, it might be annoying for others (possibly even a majority of others). Thus, this function might also require an enable/disable function, thus adding to its complexity. Many people have trouble with basic computer functionality, so it needs to be simple.

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