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PC saves to documents instead of printing

9 years ago

I routinely download .pdf files (email attachments) for my part time job and print them as I receive them. I normally download them in Firefox with the little down arrow that shows up on the attachment. When the document appears on my screen, I choose Control P to print. For some reason this past week, and I didn't change anything on purpose, my PC (HP pavilion HPE) is directing me to save them to My Documents instead of allowing me to print as a next step. I've googled and gawked at my PC settings but can't figure out how to print them instead of save them. Any help would be appreciated. I use MS Word 2010.
Pam

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Comments (7)

fruitjarfla
9 years ago
After doing the Ctrl P, do you not get a "screen" showing the destination of the print job? If so, isn't the destination your printer?
azinoh
9 years ago
Not sure I understand why Word is involved here, unless you are trying to import these PDFs into Word...but you didn't say so. If you are trying to print the PDF directly from Firefox, then display the MENU bar...select FILE : PRINT. If it still won't print, then possibly you have accidentally changed something in how FF is handling PDF files. Personally, I don't like how FF handles PDF files anyway. I just launch Adobe Reader and use it if I need to print them. But that's just me. I prefer to use the tool that fits the task instead of hoping that a non-native app will do as well.
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evenshade
Original Author
9 years ago
Hi,
fruitjar...I never get that far because after I click the down arrow on the attachment to download it takes me directly to Word to save it as a document instead of displaying it on the screen so I can do a Ctrl P. :)

azinoh - FF has worked fine for years for this task (I'll look again at their settings) but I may need to use Adobe Reader as you suggest. I'm trying to avoid the extra steps of saving it somewhere else before I print. See above note to fruitjar re: Word...I was thinking there may be a setting I could change there to have the choice to print rather than to save it to the hard drive first.
Elmer J Fudd
9 years ago
You need to change the default printer setting of your PC from PDF to whatever printer you have connected.
evenshade
Original Author
9 years ago
Thank you, snidely....I'll check that.
PKponder TX Z7B
9 years ago
What Snidely said :-)
evenshade
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks everyone....you inspired me to keep looking.
I had tried printing to the same printer via Chrome and it gave me the preview as FF had done in the past so I knew it must be the browser. It turned out that it was a Firefox setting instead of a printer setting. I went into Settings>Applications and changed the Portable Document Format (PDF) line item to "Preview in Firefox" rather than "Save File" and now it's working as before. I will document this for the future. :)
Pam

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