Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Separate your print job from someone else’s

When you’re the only person using your printer, you don’t have to worry about other users’ print jobs getting mixed in with your own. You can print like crazy and be fairly sure that the stack of paper in the printer’s output tray is all yours.

When you share the printer with others, whether from a single computer or across the network, it’s likely that print jobs from other users will be mixed in with your own. Separating the finished jobs could be a headache unless you use separator pages.

Use separator pages

A separator page is a simple page of data that Windows 2000 prints at the beginning of each print job to show the document owner and other pertinent information. Rather than search through a large stack of paper for the first page of each print job, you can instead search for separator pages, which are much easier to spot.

Windows 2000 includes four separator pages you can use as-is or modify. They include the following files, all located in the systemroot \ System32 folder:

pcl.sep

Switches the printer to PCL mode and prints the separator page.

pscript.sep

Switches the printer to PostScript mode but does not print a separator page.

sysprint.sep

Switches the printer to PostScript mode and prints a separator page.

sysprtj.sep

This separator is similar to sysprint.sep but uses Java.

Here’s how to select a separator page for a printer:

1. Open the Printers folder, right-click the printer, and choose Properties.

2. On the Advanced tab, click ...