Printing to a File

[michael di marco]

Using Home XP, I'd like to print to a file. When adding
a printer and selecting "print to file", XP still wants
to assign some printer model driver to this. When I
print, XP asks for a file name but where does it go? Am
I setting up for printing to file correctly?

 

[Lem]

The file that gets "printed to" is NOT a text file, but captures the
information that normally would be sent to the printer. That's why XP
wants to know what driver to use, so that when the file is ultimately
used, the printer will know what to do with it. In other words, unless
you configure a "generic text-only" printer, you most likely will not
find the saved file particularly readable in something like Notepad. To
print a "printed to" file (usually saved as filename.prn), go to a
command prompt and type:
copy pathname file.ext lptN /b
thus, if your printer is on lpt1 and the file is savefile.prn in
C:\MyFiles the command is:
copy c:\myfiles\savefile.prn lpt1 /b