PowerShell for Printers

PowerShell for Printers

I will show you how to use PowerShell to extract information about your printers.  We will create a script which not only lists the printers, but also reveals their properties.  For example, the printer's sharename, driver, status and 90 other properties.

Topics for PowerShell's Printers

• Uses of PowerShell Printer Scripts
• List All WMI Objects Containing the Word 'Printer'
• List All Printers on Your Server 
• List Printers Found in an Array of Computers
• Research More Properties for Win32_Printer with gm (get-Member)
• To Add or 'Map' a Network Printer

Let us consider possible uses for PowerShell printer scripts

Despite being one of the first devices to be 'plug and play', printers still give more than their fair share of problems.  One clue of trouble ahead is the large number of adjectives to qualify the context of the word printer, for example, driver, device, default, network and share.  All this means is that printers provide rich pickings for writing good PowerShell cmdlets.  Here are possible tasks for a printer script:

• List all the printers on your server.
• Trawl the network and list the printers on named servers.
• Output the list of printers to a file.
• Investigate additional WMI classes for use with printers.
• Map printers.

Preliminary Script  0:  List All WMI Objects Containing the Word 'Printer'

Many of these printer cmdlets employ WMI to interrogate computer objects such as printers.  As you may know, get-WmiObject opens up a whole world of system objects, which you can then use powershell to read their values.

The point of this initial research is to answer the question, 'How did Guy know to use the class Win32_Printer?'

Instructions

If you have not used PowerShell before, here are step-by-step instructions to execute commands. Else, just rely on the trusty copy and paste method.

Note 1: In addition to Win32_printer (featured below) there is a class for TCP/IP printing: Win32_TCPIPPrinterPort.

Example 1: List All Printers on Your Server

Learning Points

Note 1:  Guy's technique of using the variable $Class is optional.

Note 2:  ft means: format-Table with the following properties.  Incidentally, you could append -auto.

Example 2:  List Printers Found in an Array of Computers

Preliminary, amend $arrayComp to hold the names of real servers on your network.  Pay close attention to the speech marks and comma(s).

Learning Points

Note 1:  To output this list of printers to a file, append this command:
out-File "d:\powershell\Printers\array.txt" -append

Example 3:  Research More Properties for Win32_Printer with gm (get-Member)

Learning Points

Note 1:  Use of -notMatch.  "__" needs the star, hence "__*".

Note 2:  By assigning the output to a variable, we can count the number of matching properties.

Note 3: The tiny backtick (`) is useful for explaining to PowerShell that the same command continues on the next line.

Note 4: Here is a more longwinded alternative to using the .count property:
| where {if ($_.name -notmatch "__*") {$i++}}

Example 4: To Add or 'Map' a Network Printer

Preliminary step: to get this script to work you must amend 'Server\PrintShare' to reflect the real name of a server and a printer on your network.

Note 1:  You must edit the value for $PrinterPath to reflect a computer on your network.

Note 2:  This PowerShell script does not use WmiObject with its Win32 class, but instead it uses:
New-Object -com WScript.Network.

Note 3:  Troubleshooting There should be no space before the bracket, this mistake caused me some head-scratching, until I realized that for once there was no spelling mistake in AddWindowsPrinterConnection, just an unwanted space:
$net.AddWindowsPrinterConnection  ($PrinterPath)

Summary of PowerShell and Printers

Ever since I can remember, printers give more problems than any other hardware.  PowerShell is not the magic bullet to cure all your printer problems, however, PowerShell makes it easier to configure printers than using the same commands in VBScript.

See Also PowerShell Tutorials:

• PowerShell Home  • Com  • Shell Application  • Active Directory  • QAD Snap-in  • Get-Member

Please write in if you see errors of any kind.  Please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to not only to correct the fault, but also to give you credit.

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