Stop a document from printing – Video Tip

We all run into a problem sooner or later where something we printed didn’t print correctly or we want to stop it from printing. In today’s tip, I explain how to stop the printer from printing and then clean the print job from your computer.

1. Turn off your printer using its power switch
2. Immediately watch for a message by your clock that has anything to do with your printer
3. Click the little bubble message (if you see it)
4. If you don’t see the options in steps 2 & 3, then:
   1. Click Start –> Control Panel
   2. Double-click Printers
   3. Double-click your printer
5. When the printer queue dialog box appears, click one time on the document you want to delete
6. Click Document from the menus, then Cancel (If you have multiple documents, click Printer –> Cancel all documents from the menus)
7. Once the documents disappear (should be just a few moments), you can close all open windows and turn your printer on again.

I have a few more little tips and you can see this technique in action by watching the video below (2 1/2 minutes):

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Tags: delete, print, printing, stop print, stop printing, Windows

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Hardware Tips, Riding Shotgun with Rick. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

4 comments

1. Moke Raymond

   March 14, 2009 at 6:19 am

   Rick, thank you for this solution; it’s fast. Mine had been to pull out all the paper and let the printer starve, which is easy since the feed tray is accessible.

   Reply
   • Rick

     March 14, 2009 at 2:44 pm

     You are welcome. Yep, that technique works too, but you have to remember to clear the printer queue as well.

     Reply
2. Paul

   March 14, 2009 at 8:51 am

   On my old laser printer I have found that pulling the tray and letting the printer run out any sheets in process and then turning off the printer worked better because if I just turned it off the printer would sometines think it had a jam and I would have to manually remove a partially printed sheet from the printer.

   Reply
   • Rick

     March 14, 2009 at 2:41 pm

     Always a good technique too. And some printers have a cancel button on them that will work the same way as well.

     Reply