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HOWTO: Adding a "Print To" Button
to Word, Excel or PowerPoint
Last week, my HOWTO article was "Adding a SaveAs Button to Work/Excel/Powerpoint.
This week, we'll add another button that I find very useful -- the Prit To button.
Why do I want to add a "Print To" button to Word (or Excel or Powerpoint?
In part, it is because I have three printers that I use routinely. But, the real reason is that I detest any function that prints only to the "default printer." (Microsoft Word's label wizard is another that prints only to the default printer.) So, I want to choose which printer ANY TIME that I print a document.
My default printer is a fake -- it is really a program that pretends to be a printer, but really creates an Adobe Reader file (.pdf file) from whatever I print. This program is Click2PDF (read my Click2PDF review).
The second printer is my HP Laserjet 1200. This is a standard black and white printer. It's also the real printer that I normally use if I want a printed document.
The third printer is my wife's HP Deskjet, which I occasionally use.
Microsoft created all sorts of buttons on the toolbars of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint — but this is another one that I use almost every time, which they skipped.
Tech Tip
Although each new version of Word, Excel and Powerpoint has played with the layout of the buttons on the tool bars, you can move the buttons around. You can also add buttons and create or modify the button images, if you choose.
So, how do we do add a Print To button to the Word, Excel or PowerPoint toolbar? As an example, let's add a Print To button to Microsoft Word.
Here's how, step-by-step:
- Start the Microsoft Word program.
- Examine the icon toolbar, which should be right below the File / Edit / View menubar. The first six toolbar icons in the default toolbar are: New Document, Open, Save, Permission, Print and Print Preview.
- Right-click on any of the icons. It doesn't matter which. Notice that you get a nice long list of possible toolbars -- and "Customize..." is at the bottom of the list
(click on the image for a larger version) - Left-Click on "Customize..."
- On the resulting Customize dialog box, click on the Commands tab
(click on the image for a larger version)
There are two columns — Categories and Commands. Categories correspond to the items on the main menu bar (File, Edit, View, etc) plus a few more. Commands correspond to the items that show on those main menu bar pull-down menus (plus a few more). - In the Categories column, select File. We want File because that's the Word Menubar selection that includes the printing functions.
Then, let's scroll the Command section downward so that it shows "Print..." as one of the options. This is the one that opens the print dialog box that I'm calling "Print To".
(click on the image for a larger version) - Now for the tricky part -- the part that isn't obvious. When you have this dialog box open, you can drag any of those commands up to Word's toolbar and drop them wherever you want them to be.
Left-click on the "Print..." entry and drag it up onto the toolbar, just to the right of the regular Print icon. This will put the new PrintTo icon on the toolbar.
But, notice that, when you hover the Print... icon over the toolbar, you will see the "insertion cursor" that shows you where Windows will place the icon if you let go.
(click on the image for a larger version)
In the image, the new Print... button has a border around it. That is because I've just dropped the new Print... icon on the toolbar -- so it has been "selected" as the active object. If I click anywhere else, that border will disappear. - We're almost done. The icon for our new Print To button looks just like the regular Print button. Fortunately, we can fix that...
Right-click on the new "Print" icon to get a new context menu. (Notice that the Customize dialog box is still open. It has to be open for us to be able to change the toolbars.)
(click on the image for a larger version) -
Left-click on "Edit Button Image..." and the icon editor will open, showing this PrintTo icon. We'll make changes to it that will not affect the regular Print icon.
(click on the image for a larger version) -
You can edit the icon by selecting a color and then clicking in one of the small boxes in the image. If you want to undo, just click again on the same box. You can also click and drag to change a number of the icon pixels.
If you mess up the icon, that's no problem. Just Cancel. Then, Right-click on the PrintTo icon on the toolbar and pick "Reset Button Image" (Don't worry -- you'll use this feature...The only way to see the actual redesigned icon is to click OK to save the changed image.)
(click on the image for a larger version) - Click on the OK button to save the image. Then, take a look at the icon bar. If you don't like how it looks, Reset Button Image and start editing the image again. After editing, click OK to save. Repeat this step until you're satisfied.
- Then, click the Close button on the Customize dialog box, and you're finished!
Adding a similar button into the Excel and/or PowerPoint toolbars works exactly the same way.
Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!
<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/howto-adding-a-printto-button.php">HOWTO: Adding a Print-To Button to Word, Excel or PowerPoint</a>
Copyright © 2006-2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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