So, here I am sitting working in a location where the printer is defined as a direct IP printer - i.e. no print server, instead it is defined as a local printer using an IP port. And, to complicate things, I needed to print some files last night - while in the hotel room without access to the printer - that I wouldn't have access to today...
So, I used the option to "print to file" which resulted in creating print output files on my local hard drive.
Today, back in the office, the question then became, how do I get the .prn files to actually print?
If I had a locally attached printer, I would just go to a command prompt and enter: copy file.prn LPT1 /b. Where LPT1 is the name of the file created as a result of the "print to file" and /b instructs the copy command to handle the copy as a binary file to avoid stopping prematurely due to encountering a control character rather than EOF.
I looked up the "port" name of the direct IP printer IP_xx.xx.xx.xx where xx.xx.xx.xx was the IP address and tried using that - but no luck. The result was just getting a new file on my hard drive named IP_xx.xx.xx.xx.
After doing some digging, I found the following solution:
Share the direct IP printer by going into Printers and Faxes, right clicking on the printer, selecting Sharing..., and then following the simple wizard.
This effectively makes your computer a print server, which then allows you to copy the file to the new "device" as follows:
copy file.prn \\YOURCOMPUTER\ShareName /b
Woohoo!
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Posted by David at September 10, 2004 01:19 PM | Categorized under: Reference
Thanks - that solved my exact problem!