Set Up Printers

Because Business Central is a cloud service, it cannot reach local printers connected to users' machines. However, it can connect to cloud-enabled printers. In the generic version of Business Central, a cloud printer named Email Printer is installed as an extension and is ready to use after initial setup.

If a cloud printer is not installed and set up, or if an installed printer fails, then printing will default to the printing options for the browser. This is indicated by this value in the Printer field on the report request page: (none, handled by the browser).

On the Printer Management page, you can see the printers that are set up. When you have set up one or more printers, you can open the Printer Selections page to set up for your user account which specific reports to print with which printer.

When a printer is set up and assigned to specific reports, you print a report by choosing the Print button on the report request page. For more information, see Printing a Report.

Sizing Print Jobs

Cloud printing is designed for documents of a reasonable size. Most cloud services, including PrintNode and HP ePrint, have a limit of 10 MB per job. If you need to print larger reports, you may have to split them in multiple printouts.

To set up a printer

On the Printer Management page, you can see the printers that are set up and you can access the Settings page for each printer to edit an existing setup or set up a new printer.

The following procedure describes how to set up the existing Email Printer printer, which is a preinstalled extension.

Note

To use email printing, email functionality must be set up. For more information, see Set Up Email.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Printer Management, and then select the related link.

  2. Select the line for the Email Printer printer, and then choose the Edit printer settings action.

  3. On the Settings page, fill in the fields as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

    Note

    You must manually select the appropriate paper size for a printer as no local printer or user settings can be stored.

    Beware that the Email Printer extension is set to A4 paper size by default, which is not suited in North America, for example.

  4. To make a printer your default, On the Printer Management page, choose the Set as my default printer.

Privacy Notice

If you use the Email Printer extension, then all or some print jobs will be sent to the email address that you provided when configuring the printer. We strongly recommend that a unique email ID be tied to a printer device using only the official services provided by the hardware manufacturer, such as HP ePrint, KonicaMinolta EveryonePrint, or Epson Email Print.

You must take all necessary privacy precautions, including ensuring that the email printing solution has properly configured permissions, privacy settings, and retention policies. It is your responsibility to provide a correct, verified, and operational email address. For more information, see Microsoft Privacy Statement.

To select which printers print which reports

On the Printer Selections page, you can set up for your user account which reports are printed by which printer. This is useful if you work with different reports that require different printers because of their placement in the company or their output capabilities.

Important

For Business Central on-premises, the Printer Selections page can only be used for printers defined by printer extensions. It can't be used for local printers.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Printer Selections, and then select the related link. Alternatively, from the Printer Management page, select a printer, and then choose the Printer Selections action.
  2. Choose the New action to add a printer selection for a specific report.
  3. Fill in the fields as necessary.

The specified report is now set up to print to the selected printer by default.

Note

When you print the report in question, you can override this setup by selecting another printer on the Print Settings request page.

Note

If you do not set a report up for a specific printer on the Printer Selections page, then it will be printed to the default printer of the company, as defined from the Printer Management page.

You or the administrator can also use the Printer Selections page to define other variations of printing for users and reports. The following table describes the combination of values to specify different printing setup for a report.

To Set the following values
Print a report to a specific printer for all users Specify values in the Report ID and Printer Name fields and leave the User ID field blank.
Print all reports to a specific printer for a specific user Specify values in the User ID and Printer Name fields and leave the Report ID field blank.
Set the default printer for all reports Specify a value in the Printer Name field and leave the User ID and Report ID fields blank.
Print a specific report to the user's default printer Specify a value in the Report ID field and leave the Printer Name and User ID fields blank.
Print a specific report to a specific printer for a specific user Specify values in all three fields.
Note

More specific printer selections take precedence over a more general printer selections. For example, a printer selection that has values in the User ID, Report ID, and Printer Name fields takes precedence over a printer selection that has blank entries in the User ID or Report ID fields.

See Also

Printing a Report
Working with Business Central
Run Batch Jobs
Send Documents by Email