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Is there another Printing app?

O

organerito

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 9, 2008
416
52
Hi,
I am somewhat new to MacOS. I like it for the most part better than Windows. There is something I really miss from Windows. It is the printing app. If I wanted to print pages 1,4,18, I just had to write that. It is a lot slower on Mac. I have to deselect all the pages in between.
Is there another way to make this as easy as on a Windows computer? Is there an app I could install to make this easier?
I print pages every day. Please let me know if I am missing something.

Thanks a lot!
 
Scratch that, apparently I haven’t printed since upgrading to Ventura. It looks like that’s the new system default for printing sadly.
 
organerito said:
Hi,
I am somewhat new to MacOS. I like it for the most part better than Windows. There is something I really miss from Windows. It is the printing app. If I wanted to print pages 1,4,18, I just had to write that. It is a lot slower on Mac. I have to deselect all the pages in between.
Is there another way to make this as easy as on a Windows computer? Is there an app I could install to make this easier?
I print pages every day. Please let me know if I am missing something.

Thanks a lot!
Click to expand...
With the Preview app specifically, you can select the pages you want to print in the main Preview window. Click on the thumbnail for each page, holding shift to select more than one page consecutively, or hold the command key and select multiple noncontinuous pages. Then open the print dialog and choose "Selection in Preview" from the Pages section of the print dialog and you'll only get the pages you've previously chosen. Alternatively you can choose the "Selection" option in that same section and select the pages you want from right within the print dialog but this can be extremely clunky if you have a long document as you'll need to deselect all the pages you don't want to print.
 
chrfr said:
With the Preview app specifically, you can select the pages you want to print in the main Preview window. Click on the thumbnail for each page, holding shift to select more than one page consecutively, or hold the command key and select multiple noncontinuous pages. Then open the print dialog and choose "Selection in Preview" from the Pages section of the print dialog and you'll only get the pages you've previously chosen.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot! That is a good solution. It is still not as easy as on Windows. It will make things easier.
 
I hate Preview's Print dialog. It's one of the few apps that doesn't allow you to input the exact pages you want to print separated by commas into a text field.
 
You're supposed to be able to print from Terminal and give it page ranges separated by commas like "2-5,8,11-15" but I can't seem to get it to work properly.

The command
Code: 
lp -P 2-5,8 test.pdf
should print pages 2 through 5 and then 8 of the document "test.pdf" but my printer stops after 2 through 5.

Maybe someone else here knows more.

lp Man Page - macOS - SS64.com

ss64.com ss64.com
 
organerito said:
Is there another way to make this as easy as on a Windows computer? Is there an app I could install to make this easier?
I print pages every day. Please let me know if I am missing something.
Click to expand...
That is the default print dialog on a Mac used by almost every app. But a few apps (e.g. MS Word) use their own print dialog and do allow you specify comma separated page ranges. So it does depend on what you are printing.
 
gilby101 said:
That is the default print dialog on a Mac used by almost every app. But a few apps (e.g. MS Word) use their own print dialog and do allow you specify comma separated page ranges. So it does depend on what you are printing.
Click to expand...
I print PDF files most of the time. I use either Preview or PDF Expert.
 
organerito said:
Thanks a lot! That is a good solution. It is still not as easy as on Windows. It will make things easier.
Click to expand...
This is the first time in a while I've looked at the Print dialog. I thought for sure it let you choose pages to print in a text box. I guess not.

I have to say though, selecting pages visually isn't so bad-- if you know you need to print 1,5 and 8, then it takes a little more scrolling around, but if you discovered you needed 1,5 and 8 by scrolling around then it let's select while you look-- which also prevents the mistake of picking pages by the page number and getting all the wrong pages because the number on the page ignores the cover page or some such.

Still, it would be nice to support both...
 
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