How to Fix Document Stuck in Printer Queue

Sometimes, documents you’re printing get stuck in the printer’due south queue, preventing further documents from being printed. Hither’s how to ready it when that happens.

Whether you’re using a local or
shared network printer, sometimes press doesn’t go quite right. If you’ve tried
troubleshooting obvious printer problems—newspaper jams, no paper, depression ink or toner, or only restarting the printer—information technology’due south time to plow your attention toward the print queue. Ofttimes, simply clearing and restarting the print spooler—the software that prepares and manages press documents—can fix the problem. If that fails, y’all may demand to cancel 1 or more documents in your print queue and see if that gets things going again.

This should work in Windows Vista, 7, 8, and x.

Clear and Restart the Print Spooler

Immigration and restarting the print spooler should be your beginning step when trying to fix stuck impress jobs because information technology won’t actually cancel any of your currently printing documents. Instead, it restarts things and gain as if all those documents had merely been sent to the printer for the starting time time.

To do this, y’all’ll finish the Print Spooler service, delete the temporary enshroud Windows uses to spool print jobs, and and then start the service over again. Nosotros’re going to show you two ways to do this. Commencement, we’ll look at how to practise information technology manually, and then we’ll look at how to create a batch script so that you can do information technology any time you lot desire with simply a click.

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How to Set up a Shared Network Printer in Windows 7, 8, or 10

Clear and Restart the Print Spooler Manually

To clear and restart the print spooler manually, you lot’ll get-go need to terminate the Print Spooler service. Click Showtime, type “services,” then click the Services app.

In the right-hand pane of the Services window, observe and double-click the “Print Spooler” service to open up its properties window.

In the backdrop window, on the “General” tab, click the “End” button. You’ll be restarting the service a bit later on, so go ahead and leave this properties window open up for at present.

Burn down up File Explorer and browse to the following location—or just re-create and paste this text into your File Explorer accost bar and hit Enter:

%windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS

You’ll likely exist asked to provide permission to admission this folder. Go ahead and accept.

Delete the contents of the unabridged folder by pressing Ctrl+A and then the Delete key.

At present, return to that open properties window in the Services app and click “Kickoff” to restart the Impress Spooler service. Click “OK” to close the backdrop window and you tin can also go ahead and exit the Services app.

Every bit presently as you lot restart the Print Spooler service, all the documents in your queue are immediately respooled and sent to the printer. If all goes well, they should start printing once again correct away.

Articulate and Restart the Impress Spooler with a Batch File

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How to Write a Batch Script on Windows

If immigration your print queue by restarting the Print Spooler service is something you lot think you’ll be doing more once—or you’d simply rather non go through the trouble of using the Services app—you lot can besides create a simple
batch file
to do the job.

Fire upwards Notepad or your preferred text editor. Copy and paste the following text as separate lines into the blank document:

net stop spooler

del /Q /F /S "%windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*.*"

internet showtime spooler

Next, you’ll save your certificate as a .bat file. Open the “File” carte du jour and click the “Relieve As” command. In the “Salvage As” window, browse to the location you desire to relieve the file. On the “Salvage equally type” drib-downward menu, choose the “All files (*.*)” entry. Name your file whatever you like, only include “.bat” at the end. Click “Save” when you’re washed.

Yous can now double-click that batch file to articulate the print spooler whenever you want. Better notwithstanding, create a shortcut to the batch file and and so identify that shortcut where it makes the near sense to you—desktop, Start card, or taskbar—and you lot’ll accept 1-click admission to clear and restart the print spooler whenever you want.

Restart or Cancel Some or All of Your Press Documents

If clearing and restarting the impress spooler didn’t do the flim-flam, the next footstep you’ll desire to take is to meet if you can place—and cancel—whatsoever document is stuck. Sometimes, clearing a single stuck document volition go your printer going again and any other print jobs in the queue tin can finish printing ordinarily. Other times, you might accept to abolish all the currently printing documents so try press them once more.

Click Kickoff, type “devices,” then click the “Devices and Printers” Command Console app.

In the Devices and Printers window, right-click the printer you’re having trouble with then click the “Meet what’south printing” command to open the print queue.

The print queue window shows the impress jobs currently pending printing. If a single certificate is causing the problem and you have more than one document in the queue, information technology’s usually the earliest document that’southward stuck. Click the header for the “Submitted” column and so that the documents are arranged in the order they were submitted, with the primeval at the top. Note that in our example, we arranged the columns then they would fit in our screenshot ameliorate, so your “Submitted” cavalcade may be farther to the right.

Right-click the earliest print task and then select “Restart” from the context menu.

If your printer cranks upward and starts printing later on restarting the certificate, yous’re good to go. Otherwise, you lot’ll need to try canceling the document. Right-click the document over again and select the “Cancel” command.

Click “Aye” to ostend that yous want to cancel the document.

If the cancellation was successful, the certificate should disappear from the impress queue and the printer will commencement printing the next certificate in line. If the certificate didn’t get canceled at all—or if the certificate did get canceled merely printing is still not happening—you lot’ll demand to try canceling all the documents in the queue. Click the “Printer” card and then choose the “Cancel all documents” command.

All the documents in the queue should disappear and you tin try printing a new document to run into if it works.

If restarting the print spooler and clearing documents from the print queue didn’t prepare your printing problem—and your printer was working successfully previously—then you’ll likely need to turn your attention toward things like updating or reinstalling your printer drivers or moving on to whatever diagnostics are provided by the manufacturer of your printer. But hopefully, these steps accept helped fix your stuck print task before going that far.