printing FILE NAME and DATE PRINTED?

There is no option in Acrobat to do this. Nor does the standard print dialog offer it for Preview. I also could not find a setting within CUPS to perform this.

There are print drivers that support this and there are also some machines that can do this, although they typically print the information on a preceeding page.

So you may have to rely on third party software to achieve this.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

does all mac produced software use the "global mac" driver and present the same user interface?

Unfortunately no. It would make things easier if there was. There is a core set of files that a vendor will use with their driver to get the print job - spool file - to the printer. But the user interface can vary, mostly so that features about the printer can be displayed in a pretty GUI view.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

hi. thank you very much for this.

and then other software will use their own driver and present THEIR OWN user interface?

Applications can use the Apple print dialog or use their own, which is what Adobe and Microsoft do. So it is not always possible to select a driver feature from the application print dialog. With the Adobe print dialog, you need to enter another menu, and you get a warning when you do, to make a change to a driver setting.

And then you get the Print icon in the MS Office ribbon that bypasses the print dialog and sends the file directly to the printer, thus failing to invoke a driver preference.

Also not that one of the issues with making a Preset, which is covered in your other post, is that Preset can be application specific. For example, a preset for Two Sided and Staple for Preview will not work when you use Acrobat Pro or Reader.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

or is the DRIVER the domain of the printer manufacturer and just the USER INTERFACE is the domain of the software application?

The answer for this is that printer vendor makes the driver. And how it operates, in as far as how the user interacts with it, depends on the print dialog provided by the application. So different brands of driver, or even drivers for different models of printer, can behave differently on OS X. When you then add an application to the equation, you can then get a different procedure to perform an adjustment for your print job.

So it is easy to understand why you can get confused. Hope this helps clear things up a bit. Reply if you need more info or explanations.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

...so that every page printed showed the file name and the data printed. ... i haveadobe acrobat...

With Adobe Acrobat Pro (versions 9 & X), use the Add Header & Footer options under Tools > Edit Page Design.

HTH

LilyLC wrote:

With Adobe Acrobat Pro (versions 9 & X), use the Add Header & Footer options under Tools > Edit Page Design.

This action adds the date to the document rather than overlaying it when printing. Maybe this is acceptable to the OP?

And I could not find how to add the document file name with this process which the OP asked for.

PAHU wrote:

LilyLC wrote:

With Adobe Acrobat Pro (versions 9 & X), use the Add Header & Footer options under Tools > Edit Page Design.

This action adds the date to the document rather than overlaying it when printing. Maybe this is acceptable to the OP?

The OP could add the header or footer, print the document and then close it without saving, such that the added header or footer is not made a part of the document. Alternatively, one can remove headers and footers by selecting Remove in the list of Header & Footer options.

And I could not find how to add the document file name with this process which the OP asked for.

Type the document name into one of the provided text boxes, i.e., Left/Center/Right Header Text and Left/Center/Right Center Text.

LilyLC wrote:

And I could not find how to add the document file name with this process which the OP asked for.

Type the document name into one of the provided text boxes, i.e., Left/Center/Right Header Text and Left/Center/Right Center Text.

True. I should have said I could not find an automated way.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

hi LLC,

can i SAVE the original pages document as a TEMPLATE somehow and put int he HEADER the date and then right click in this area and tell pages to ALWAYS UPDATE the date? then can i put in the footer the NAME OF THE DOCUMENT? then in the future if i always open this TEMPLATE first i will print the final template to PDF (this is the final copy) - and i guess i will also save the pages document? i mean, maybe there is no reason to actually have to save this pages document as long as i have - er - well i suppose it would be good to save the pages document in case i have to resend it after editing it slightly?

A custom template would fit your needs. You could use one of the provided Pages templates and customize it. In Pages, go to the Help menu and in the Search box type the word "header." A list of options will appear and in the Help Topics section, select "Using Headers and Footers." The Help Center window will appear with information about how headers and footers work in Pages.

Note 1: The premise of headers and footers is that they appear on all pages.

Note 2: If you use "formatted text fields" the inserted text is automatically updated.

Note 3: Under the Insert menu, Filename is available and is a "formatted text field."

Within the Help Center window, after reading about headers & footers, near the top of the window, type "templates" in the Search box and hit the return key. A list of Help articles appear and you might want to review all of them to familiarize yourself on the capabilities of Pages templates to help decide how to proceed.

Acrobat has the capability to save a PDF in other formats such as Microsoft Word, which can be opened in Pages. That said IMO, a separate Pages document for each "custom" letter/report would not be necessary.

As for file management, each person is different in terms of organization and naming protocols. Consider searching for file management software.

HTH

hotwheels 22 wrote:

PAHU can you explain what you mean by this "And then you get the Print icon in the MS Office ribbon that bypasses the print dialog and sends the file directly to the printer, thus failing to invoke a driver preference."

The default action of the Print icon in the MS Word ribbon bar is called "Print one copy". When you press this, instead of getting the print dialog that you see when you press File > Print, the print job is sent to whatever printer is set as the default. No print dialog appears. The job is simply sent to the printer with no option to select print options. So if you wanted two sided but the default is one sided, then it will print one sided, regardless of whatever preset you have set in the normal print dialog (ie the print dialog you see when you press File > Print).

hotwheels 22 wrote:

i guess i have to live with it but after having hacked through the thicket of the Mac printer dialog (seems like all four of the various items that i use most are under four different pulldown menu items and i have to do a minimum of five clickthroughs every time i print to something other than one of my - sigh - 12 preset defaults...).

Unfortunately this is the process you have to use. If Adobe and MS (and there are others) simply used the default Apple print dialog then your life would be easier. But this is not the case and you have to jump through the hoops of the various print dialogs to achieve your requirement.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

anyway, are you saying that when i used the PC it allowed me to skip to an all-encompassing PC wide printer dialog? because i don't remember life being this difficult on the PC which seems very silly given everything else being so well done on the mac side.

No. While the majority of applications on Windows have the same print dialog there are still some apps, like those from Adobe, that have their own print dialog.

Also in Windows, you still need to open the Properties button in the print dialog to make output selections. And there is no Presets function for the print dialog, so you always need to make changes if you want to generate documents with different finishing results.

What is easier in Windows is setting defaults. This can be done via the Advanced > Printing Defaults menu. No Terminal or special web pages required.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

also, just to be absolutely sure i understand - i have a PRINTER DRIVER, and then i have the MAC OSX print funtionality somehow? and /between/ these two sit the SOFTWARE PRINT DIALOG, is that right? i mean - i /have/ to use whatever the software provides me (for instance Adobe Acrobat) and short of opening in another program i am stuck with what i am given. so in the case of Acrobat i will have to set up presets solely for pdf's that i open in acrobat?

For Acrobat and any other application that provides its own print dialog, you have to make your selections via that print dialog. If the application print dialog does not provide the required finishing option, then you often have a button from the application print dialog to access the Apple print dialog.

So in summary, if the application print dialog provides you with the option to select your desired output, then use it. If however the desired option is not present in the applications print dialog, then you will have to access the Apple print dialog from the applications print dialog.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

if i have documents coming that i print for a project and these are quite naturally coming from different software it i have no way now of being able to FIND this file in my computer when i am looking at it.

Consider using Find from the File menu or Spotlight to search for the document. In one of your previous posts, you stated that you name documents with a date and name. Then perhaps search for the name. Also, with your method of naming documents, if the document is a letter, wouldn't the date on the letter and the person to whom the letter is addressed to give clues to the filename and thus finding it on your computer?

this is a major organizational issue over here and customizing a template for all my various software should be unnecessary IMHO.

I do not know how many documents you deal with but I do know that there a many organizations that deal with billions of documents. In addition, if you share documents with others or others with you, there is not a filenaming method that works for everyone. People adapt to each other. A date in a filename could have several forms such as month-date-year or year-month-date, two digits or four digits for year and so on and so forth.

Are you saying it IS necessary to have this dual file type that has a Pages document which then prints a PDF?

No. Please re-read what I wrote and the Pages Help Center articles.

also, is there in fact a way to save a PDF back out as a Pages document?

Yes, re-read what I wrote (that which you quoted).

"Acrobat has the capability to save a PDF in other formats such as Microsoft Word, which can be opened in Pages. That said IMO, a separate Pages document for each "custom" letter/report would not be necessary."

alternatively i guess i could create a Pages TEMPLATE - that has a DATE in the header that automatically updates .../but/ i am realizing that this has the unfortunate consequence of having the DATE updated if i open the Pages document again

But that is what you stated you wanted because

...and try to remember to SAVE AS this document with another name with the original FILE NAME but a NEW DATE. this does not always work and sometimes i write over the original accidentally.

anyway, maybe the answer here is to create a Template for any new document type and simply use this template any time i need to create a PDF and then not save or delete the original Pages document but this seems a bit hairy and dangerous in terms of possibly losing a file if i forget to print to PDF or something.

You have redundant backups, yes?

It seems that your understanding of a template is different from what it actually is, its purpose and its use. If you have not already done so, try using one of the included Pages templates to create a document that you would reuse to get a better understanding of how it works and to help determine your workflow. What you wrote in the last post seems to be a lot of what ifs but not hands on experience with the software itself. My response was based on my experience of using many types of software and in particular to your questions, Pages and Acrobat. Perhaps you will find better responses in the Pages forum and for Acrobat there is a forum at the Adobe web site.

is there a lock file functionality in Pages in Mountain Lion or was this in Lion?!

Perhaps reviewing the tutorials for Pages or searching with Google would help answer many of your questions.

hotwheels 22 wrote:

i would love to get some "real person" input on this.

Thank you for letting me know that I am NOT a "real person."