FasterFiles

Action: Print

Using the action "Print File or Folder Content", you can print one or multiple specified files or the files stored in a specified folder.

Settings

Supported Formats

It is not possible to print every file or every file type. Think about music or video files, for example. Because of that, FasterFiles will search for an appropriate application for the print job of the specific file type before printing a file.

Only in the case that such a program is installed on your computer, the corresponding file can be printed. If not, FasterFiles will show the error message "Failed to print. No application for printing this file found.".

In the next two sections, you will learn how FasterFiles is determining an appropriate application for printing and how you are able to define your own print software if you do not want to use the default one.

Technical Details

In order to find an application for printing the specified file format, FasterFiles is looking in the Windows Registry.

For text files (TXT), for example, you can find the entry HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile there. Below this key, you can find the entry "shellprintcommand" in which the command for printing this file type via the default printer is defined. For example, this could be "%SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe /p %1". That means, that text files should be printed using the application notepad.exe and that first, the parameter /p (print) should be passed and then the filename (%1). FasterFiles reads out this information when trying to print a text file and will try to start the specified program with the parameters defined here.

For printing using a specified printer, there is another entry in "shellprinttocommand". For example, this could be "%SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe /pt "%1" "%2", where the parameter %1 is the filename again and %2 is standing for the name of the printer.

If there is no such entry existing for a specific file, if the entry is erroneous, if the specified program is no longer installed or if the program cannot handle the file or the parameters specified here, the file can not be printed.

Use other Programs for Printing

If there is no application installed on your system for printing a specific file, or if you want to print using any other program than the default application, you can also use the action "Execute Program" for printing a file.

Just specify the path of your desired program when creating your action (for example "C:\Programs\MyPrintStudio.exe") and type the parameters initializing the print job into the field parameters, for example "-p C:\file.dat" or "/p C:\file.dat". Of course, you can also use placeholders within the parameters. For dynamically printing the last file, you can for example specify "-p "%LASTFILE%"" here. We have used double quotes to ensure that spaces in the file name will not corrupt the process.