How to Change the Preferred Printer

You can choose a physical printer or a file printer as your preferred printer in Windows.

Windows lets you choose a preferred or default printer that is automatically selected when you print from a Windows program. When you set a printer as the default in Windows, you click a Print icon or select Print from a menu, then click "Print" again in the Printer window to send the print job to the default printer. You can easily change the default printer and always have the option of changing to a different printer when you print a document.

Instructions

1. Press and hold the "Windows" key, then "R." Type "control panel" in the Open text field.

2. Click Hardware and Sound, then Devices and Printers.

3. Right-click a printer in the Printers and Faxes panel. Select Set as Default Printer.

Tips & Warnings

• The default printer does not have to be a physical printer. If you have Adobe Acrobat or another PDF-creation program installed, you can set the print driver for PDF creation to be your default printer. For example, Adobe Acrobat installs an Adobe PDF print driver and PrimoPDF installs a PrimoPDF print driver.

References

• Microsoft: Change Your Default Printer
• Louisiana State University: Windows Vista: Changing the Default Printer

Resources

• Microsoft: Windows