Print my documents

This set of activities gives your Robot the ability to print documents, command the printer and obtain printer queue details.

Clear Printer Queue

The activity clears all jobs from the queue assigned to the printer. If the printer name is not provided, the activity will be performed for the default printer.

Get Data From Queue

The activity gets data from the queue assigned to a specific printer. If the printer is not specified, the default one is used. Data is returned as .

Get Default Printer

This activity returns the name of the default system printer as a string. So for output, you have to use variable.

List Printers

This activity returns a list of s with names of all system printers (also not-real ones like print to PDF or print to OneNote). For output you have to use a list of strings (System.Collections.Generic.List).

Pause Printer

Stops provided printer name (or for the default system printer if the name is not provided). It doesn’t stop jobs in the queue, it stops the whole printer as hardware.

It has the same effect if the user opens the queue for the printer, and chooses menu Printer -> Pause Printing.

Print File

This activity gives your Robot the ability to print any file for which you have assigned in the system default application that can print this file.

Printing is based on default applications for extension. So, i.e: you will not be able to print *.doc file without MS Word application installed. 

NOTE: Each application will be opened for a few seconds, but will be also closed automatically!

Tested for:

1. .pdf (Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2020.013.20064.12623 & Foxit PhantomPDF Business 10.1.0.37527),

2. .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx (Microsoft Office 2010 & Microsoft Office 2016),

3. .txt (NotePad),

4. .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp (MS Paint).

Printer Status

Takes as input printer name (which can be obtained using List Printers activity) or uses the default system printer.

As an output, it returns a dictionary of (string, Boolean). String is a status name and Boolean is false or true for a specific status. Your printer has to report specific status i.e. printer door is open to the system, otherwise, it will not be returned by this activity.

Resume Printer

If the printer has the status ‘Paused’, it resumes print to work.

Set Default Printer

This activity can be used to change/set the default system printer. You should use printer name (which can be obtained using the List Printers activity). Name – Input – should be provided as .

You can easily print documents or command your printer without writing a single line of code or handling printer window.  You can also get the number of pending jobs in the queue and details of jobs or command your printer.