Printing Offline

If your printer is disconnected, you can still queue up documents for printing. You might want to do this while traveling, for instance, if you have a laptop and don't want to drag a 50-pound laser printer along in your carry-on luggage. (It's hard to get them through security.)

If you try this, however, you'll quickly find that the Print Manager will beep, pop up messages to tell you about the missing printer, and otherwise make your life miserable. To silence it, Open the Devices and Printers window. Right-click the printer icon and select See What's Printing. Then, in the queue window's menu, click Printer, Use Printer Offline. The printer's icon will turn a light-gray color to show that it's been set for offline use, and Windows will now quietly and compliantly queue up anything you "print."

Just don't forget that you've done this or nothing will print even when you've reconnected your printer. You'll end up yelling at your unresponsive printer, when it's only doing what it was told. When you've reconnected the printer, repeat those steps and uncheck Use Printer Offline. This is a nifty feature, but available only for local printers, not printers shared by other computers.