Print Preferences handled differently in Windows 7 than XP causing problems for customer locations
Customers use web based application that they run only in Internet Explorer (both 8 or 9). Many of them have a label printer and a report printer attached to the same computer. In Windows XP this was not a problem. But with Windows 7 you can designate the printer you want to print to from the application but Internet Explorer uses the print preferences for the default printer no matter which printer you choose. Obviously this causes a problem due to the different sizes of paper on the two printers. Any ideas for a solution or work around? Having all customers go back to Windows XP is not an option!
July 16th, 2012 10:11am

Hi, Firstly, please make sure that the printer drivers for Windows 7 have been installed correctly. Also, please set the Printing preferences for each printer in Devices and Printers and see how it works. And, check whether the issue will occur if you do not use Internet Explorer to print. If issue persists, please let us know more details about the issue and capture screenshots for the issue so that we can check if we can reproduce the issue. Hope this helps. Jeremy Wu TechNet Community Support
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July 17th, 2012 4:49am

Hi, Firstly, please make sure that the printer drivers for Windows 7 have been installed correctly. Also, please set the Printing preferences for each printer in Devices and Printers and see how it works. And, check whether the issue will occur if you do not use Internet Explorer to print. If issue persists, please let us know more details about the issue and capture screenshots for the issue so that we can check if we can reproduce the issue. Hope this helps. Jeremy Wu TechNet Community Support
July 17th, 2012 4:53am

Sorry it has taken me so long to respond. Printer drivers for Windows 7 have been installed correctly. It doesn't matter what brand printers are involved. The label printer is the one that has the smaller page size obviously -- brand can be Cognitive, Godex or Zebra. All respond the same way. If you have the 8 1/2 x 11 printer set to the default printer but you want to print to the label printer about 5 or 6 labels spit out because it is trying to print 8 1/2 x 11 instead of 2.0 x 2.4. It works the opposite way if the label printer is set to the default. If you have the label printer set to the default it will print a tiny report on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper on the report printer. In this example it is a Canon, but it doesn't matter what brand the report/invoice printer is. Keep in mind this is choosing the printer from Internet Explorer that you want to print to and even confirming that the printer preferences show correctly from the printer dialogue window in IE. This is using IE9 but it happens in 8 as well. It DOES NOT happen in Microsoft Word, Chrome or Mozilla. I just sent a 2.0 x 2.4 Word document to the label printer when the default printer was set to the Canon and it print just fine. I also sent a regular size document to the Canon with the label printer (RT200) set as the default. It also printed normal size. A person should be be able to attach 2 printers to a computer and print to either one from Internet Explorer and have it use the print preferences assigned to their chosen printer regardless of whether it is set as the default or not. We developed our web-based application to use Internet Explorer so there are other issues that keep us from using another browser --our customers are told that we only support IE, but if this doesn't get resolved we might have to change that. Thank you for any help you are able to provide.
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September 4th, 2012 3:52pm

Also, we were just able to determine that the problem does not occur on Windows XP running IE7, but if you upgrade it IE8 it does. I thought this was particularly relevant so I wanted to mention it. Thank you, Diana
September 10th, 2012 1:14pm

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