Putting printer icon on dock - how to?

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Level 2

165 points

Putting printer icon on dock - how to?

I am sorry if this is so obvious; I just cannot find an answer. Question 1: Can I put my only printer onto the Dock as an icon; Question 2: If yes, can I then drag a Word 2008 file onto it so that it will print without having to open the program to have that document printed.

TIA

MBP 17" - Penryn 2.5gHZ - 2M, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Aug 6, 2008 4:49 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

John Blanchard1

Level 5

5,835 points

Aug 6, 2008 4:54 PM in response to Sol Berger

Yes, you can put the printer icon into the dock, by starting a print job and clicking on the proxy while it's open and selecting "Keep in Dock," or you can just keep in on the desktop by making an alias from /Library/Printers.

Word and the OS have some problems with drag and drop - see:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1651651&tstart=0

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Sol Berger Author

Level 2

165 points

Aug 6, 2008 5:18 PM in response to John Blanchard1

Many thanks for your prompt response; I will try it and see.

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Answer 3

Sol Berger Author

Level 2

165 points

Aug 6, 2008 5:26 PM in response to Sol Berger

OK, I tried it and it works; however, it also opens up Word 2008 to print the document - not exactly what I wanted. I could just as easily open up Word myself to print and I wanted to avoid this.

Would anyone know of any other way to print directly to the printer without opening the original program that created this document?

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Answer 4

Sol Berger Author

Level 2

165 points

Aug 6, 2008 5:30 PM in response to Sol Berger

As a follow-up: I just tried printing a .TXT file created from TextEdit; it did NOT open the program but the print came out without the proper formatting from TextEdit.

I guess I cannot win in this situation.

Thanks anyhow.

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Answer 5

Aug 6, 2008 9:35 PM in response to Sol Berger

This is because the printing system does not know how to handle the Word mime type. In 2008, though, it doesn't put up the print dialog, it just launches the application and then prints the file; as opposed to 2004, which requires user intervention with the print dialog. Opening up Word yourself, you'd then have to invoke the print dialog somehow…

PDF is a mime type that the printing system can handle, if that helps at all.

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