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Occasionally you'll want to slip something away from your PC's whirling electrons and onto something more permanent: a piece of paper. The following sections detail what's involved when printing in Vista.
Printing your masterpiece
Windows Vista shuttles your work off to the printer in any of a half-dozen different ways. Chances are, you'll be using the following methods most often:
- Choose Print from your program's File menu.
- Right-click your document icon and choose Print.
- Click the Print button on a program's toolbar.
- Drag and drop a document's icon onto your printer's icon.
If a dialog box appears, click the OK button; Windows Vista immediately begins sending your pages to the printer. If the printer is turned on (and still has paper and ink), Windows handles everything automatically. If you want to work on something else, Windows prints your file in the background while you work.
If the printed pages don't look quite right — perhaps the information doesn't fit on the paper correctly or it looks faded — you need to fiddle around with the print settings or perhaps change the paper quality. Follow these suggestions to maximize your printing experience:
 | - If you stumble on a particularly helpful page in the Windows Help system, right-click inside the topic or page and choose Print. (Or, click the page's Print icon, if you spot one.) Windows prints a copy for you.
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- For quick 'n' easy access to your printer, right-click your printer's icon and choose Create Shortcut. Click Yes to confirm, and Windows Vista puts a shortcut to your printer on your desktop. To print things, just drag and drop their icons onto your printer's new shortcut. (You can find your printer's icon by opening the Control Panel from the Start menu and choosing Printer in the Hardware and Sound area.)
- To print a bunch of documents quickly, select all their icons. Then right-click the selected icons and choose Print. Windows Vista quickly shuttles all of them to the printer, where they emerge on paper, one after the other.
Peeking at your printed page before it hits the paper
For many, printing requires a leap of faith: You choose Print from the menu and close your eyes while the thing prints. If you're blessed, the page looks fine. But if you're cursed, you've wasted another sheet of paper.
 | The Print Preview option, found on nearly every program's File menu, foretells your printing fate before the words hit paper. Print Preview compares your current work with your program's page settings and then displays a detailed picture of the printed page. That preview makes it easy to spot off-kilter margins, dangling sentences, and other printing fouls. |
Different programs use slightly different Print Preview screens, with some offering more insight than others. But almost any program's Print Preview screen lets you know whether everything will fit onto the page correctly.
If the preview looks fine, choose Print at the top of the window to send the work to the printer. If something looks wrong, however, click Close to return to your work and make any necessary adjustments.
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