2.8. Printing from Word

You probably work in one of those modern paperless offices, so you don’t really need to read this section. No? Well, read on to learn how to move your words from screen to page. In the best of worlds, when everything is set up just right, all you have to do to print is press ⌘-P or click the printer icon on the toolbar. After a second or two, your printer starts pumping out pages. What could possibly go wrong? Well, what if you have more than one printer and need to choose? What if you want to print on both sides of the page, but you don’t have one of those fancy duplex printers. What if you want to print to a PDF file? That’s where Word’s special print settings and options come in to play. This section gives you the printing basics. For more details, and special operations such as printing envelopes and labels, see Chapter 5.

Pressing ⌘-P or clicking the printer icon on the toolbar sends your document to what’s known as the default printer. No fuss, no questions, and no dialog boxes. The default printer is the one your Mac always uses unless you specifically tell it otherwise. If you work in an office with several printers, some may have special features such as color, duplex printing, or blazing speed. When you want to choose a printer other than the default, or if you need to make other technical tweaks before printing, go to File→Print to open the Print window, shown in Figure 2-16.