Displaying Printer Control Panel

[mebrown1110]

I'm sure there's an easy way to do this and I'm just blind to it. I'd like to press a hotkey that would display the print queue for my default printer so I can adjust preferences, delete jobs, etc. Apart from having MEX click on lots of icons to get to it, I don't know how to precisely call it up.

 

The MEX version I have (3.5.0.1) lets you select a printer, and the control panel options let me select various groups but NOT the Printers and Faxes group. But I haven't found a command that does precisely what I'm looking for.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks -- meb

[joe]

Hello!

 

Here is an untested thought. What if you were to create a shortcut to your printer and place it on the desktop. Then use the Program Launch command to engage it? A shortcut can be created by right-clicking on the printer in the Control Panel.

[mebrown1110]

Thanks for the prod, Joe. I should have thought of that. After some messing about, I got what I wanted.

 

I created the printer shortcut and put it in my C:\ root and renamed it printer.lnk. But MEX's Program Launch didn't work; for some reason, it called up a Send To program I have and asked me to copy or move the printer.lnk file to another folder. (Curiously, even Mike's Command Line ((freeware command-line tool)) called up the Send To program when I entered "c:\printer.lnk." I guess they didn't see this as a launchable file.)

 

What did work was using the Windows Run command to call the shortcut; that works, for some reason. So here's what I've got now:

 

Text Type: <WIN>r<ENTER>

Wait For Window Title: "Run"

Text Type: <BACKSPACE>c:\printer.lnk<ENTER>

 

I might want to play with the timing to speed it up some, but it does what I want it to do. Thanks for the help.

[randallc]

I am interested in this, as I had to work around the "link"s not running from program launch previously. i thought it was a setup problem with Win XP on my computer, but I wonder if it is a bug. thanks to Joe for his book, which I read recently, by the way!

 

I had to run DOS bat files directly rather than from their shortcuts.

 

(A separate topic is probably warranted re DOS bat files; I presume ME does not try to emulate Xcopy commands in FileCopy so you can easily copy depending on the newer file? I tried it using logic and setting variables from files dates, but too clumsy? - i'll post as topic..)

 

Best Randall