Joybell

When I click Print, a simple menu comes up that lets me select which printer to use. This menu doesn't change regardless of which of my half dozen printers I select.

On this first menu, there is a check box for "Manual Duplex Printing." With a check in this box, it should print all the odd or all of the even pages, then pause and tell me to reload the pages and hit the button to restart the printer so it can print the other side of the pages.

Directly to the right of the box that shows which printer I'm using is the Preferences Button.

With my Canon MP160 selected, when I click the Preferences button, and select the Page Setup tab, there's a box that can be checked/unchecked labelled "Duplex Printing." Putting a check in that box should work like the "print both sides" selection I've described above in the thread, but if you put the check in the box on this menu you can also specify a "staple margin" and tell it how wide to make it. The printing process is pretty much the same, regardless of which menu you use to set the option.

If I choose a different printer, a similar choice appears but on a different tab (after I click Preferences). Both Canon printers show the "duplex printing" option but two HP printers that I looked at show it as "print both sides." Among five different printers that I looked at, the tab showing the critical option had three different labels, and menus using the same "tab name" were not located the same for the printers that used that name.

This is with the Vista drivers for these printers. The menu probably will be a little different for an XP (or earlier) driver. You apparently can add "Duplex Print" to "Print Both Sides" and "Print Odd/Even Pages" as things you might find that all do the same thing but may do it slightly differently. Other printers may use other names for the same option(s).

The "print pages in reverse order" may appear regardless of whether the odd/even pages option is on the menus or the "both sides" or "duplex" options are the ones that appear, since it can be helpful when switching between printers that deliver the pages face up vs those where they come out face down.

If the selection you're offered is "duplex" or "both sides" (or something we haven't thought of that might be vaguely similar) you probably won't need to flip the forward/reverse box, since the driver should make the change automatically for you, when it pauses for you to reload the pages (... maybe).

John