Dear Geek,
My work has a printer that everyone shares through our network. I brought my laptop in, as it has some work I’ve been focusing on at home, but I can’t get it to connect to the printer. I don’t want to look silly in front of my co-workers… What do I do?
Sincerely,
Printing at work
Dear Minnesota pop star, Prints (Get it? It sounds like PRINCE…. Okay, not that funny)
First thing to do is find the “Printers and Other Hardware” file, then “Printers and Faxes”, which should be under the Control Panel. Under the “Printer Tasks” there should be an option to “Add a Printer”, this is what you want to do, so click next. You then want to choose the option to add “a network printer, or a printer attached to another computer”, and click next. You now have a few relatively easy options to choose from to hook up to your printer.
The first option is available only if you are logged onto a Windows domain. You will want to “Find a printer in the directory” and click next. Next, you will want to click “Browse” to the right of the “Location” button. A few locations should pop up, so you need to choose the location of the printer you’d like to use. Click “Find Now”, and the printer you want should show up, so all you have to do is select it.
The second option is to type in the printer name or browse for it. You have to find the “Connect to this printer” option, and either browse for it on the network by finding it in the “Shared printers” option, or typing in the printer name in the format \\printserver_name\share_name.
You can also connect to a printer by dragging the printer from the “Printers” folder, and dropping it into your Printers folder, or by simply right-clicking the icon, and clicking “Connect”.
If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to: geek@tbyd.ca.
We’ll translate it from Geek-lish to English, so it actually helps!
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