Introduction

Spindle Professional and Spindle Document Distribution both follow the same logic to establish which printer will be used for any printed output. In this article we will look at the rules it uses.

Applies to

• Spindle Professional 2009
• Spindle Professional 2012
• Spindle Professional v6
• Spindle Document Distribution v7
• Spindle Document Distribution v8

Configuration

Lets take a look at a system that has four printers attached to it, in addition to the virtual printers provided by Spindle Document Distribution, a Xerox ColorQube, an Epson, a Canon and a Lexmark:

We see that the Default Windows printer is configured as the Xerox ColorQube.

Spindle Document Distribution Tools

User Setup

During initial configuration you are presented with the User Setup wizard, where you can specify the default Spindle Printer:

Here we have chosen the Epson as our Default Spindle printer

Document Automation

Within each Document Operation you can specify a printer to be used for that document:

Here we can choose the printer we want our (in this case) invoices to be printed on. 

If we were to choose DEFAULT WINDOWS PRINTER, the document would be printed on our ColorQube, if we were to choose DEFAULT SPINDLE PRINTER, then these documents are printed on the EPSON DX4021. We can also nominate any other printer by its name if we choose to.

• Selecting DEFAULT WINDOWS printer would mean that in the future, if the printer were to be switched out, all you would need to change would be the Windows Default Printer in the Settings app.
• Selecting DEFAULT SPINDLE would mean that if the printer were to be switched out, you would need to update the User Settings in Spindle Document Distribution tools.
• Selecting any other printer means that should that printer no longer be available, you will see warnings in the processor log.

Printer Profiles

The final method for specifying a printer for an operation is to use a Printer Profile. This allows multiple users in different physical locations to use the same document operation and have any printed documents printed near them.

To use these, each user will need to nominate a printer to be their local printer, and then the profile is selected in the operation.

Allowing Windows to manage default printer

In the Windows printer settings app, shown in the first image, there is an option to "Let Windows manage my default printer". This option will set the default printer to be the most recently used printer and is useful for mobile users, however, if you have Spindle Document Distribution configured to use the Default Windows printer in its operations, then this option must be disabled, as immediately after the print job is sent to Spindle Pro Auto, Windows will switch the default printer to Spindle Pro Auto, if the operation then attempts to print to Spindle Pro Auto, and as there are now by definition no ##COMMAND...##s on the document, you are presented with the Spindle Pro window.

If nothing prints

In a typical document operation, the Distribution preferences are set as follows:

or, more commonly these days: 

(Since everyone stopped using Fax in the mid-2000s)

With this configuration, Spindle Document Distribution will check the document for a value in ##EMAIL...## (and then in ##FAX...## if configured) and if this (or these) is empty, will send the document to a printer. If the distribution does not include a Print method, ie:

Then any document with no value in ##EMAIL...## (or ##FAX...##) will not be distributed.

Similarly, if the User Settings are configured to use ---NONE--- instead of Standard Printer:

 Then even if there is a print distribution configured, no document will be printed.

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