As a user, you may need to verify what you have printed for your records, or as a system administrator, you may wish to know what everybody else has been printing on your system. The easiest way to find out is by viewing the print queue on Windows. Here are a couple of ways that you can do that.
View Your Printed Document History Using Event Viewer
Even though people utilize Event Viewer to diagnose different problems in a system, you can use this tool to monitor your printed documents on Windows.
Unfortunately, the only way to view printed documents is through the GUI, and Event Viewer does not keep logs of such actions as a Rule of thumb. For this purpose, it is set up to log your printing activities only when manually activating this functionality.
Initially, open the Run dialogue box through Win + R, type eventvwr in the dialogue’s Text field, and hit the enter button. This will open the Event Viewer window.
In the left pane, right-click and select Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows. Look for the PrintService folder in the Windows folder. Next, right-click on the Operational log in the middle pane and click on Properties.
Select Log Properties from the appearance Properties menu, go to the General tab, and check the option Enable logging. You should also describe what should happen to your Windows when the size of the event log reaches its limit.
After setting the changes, click Apply, then OK.
Windows version will now maintain the log file of any document printed on your system. You can always check it from the Event Viewer to the location where it is stored.
To make that particular print log visible, search the Event Viewer on the search menu. Alternatively, users can click the print history key on the left pane to go to the Applications and Services Logs Microsoft Windows PrintService and double-click on Operational to see the details.
Below it, in the middle pane, there will be entries for all sorts of printer events. These entries can also be sorted according to Date and Time or Task Category. Click on an entry to see the date and time of the print job and the printer employed for it.
View Your Printed Document History Using PaperCut Print Logger
As has been clearly seen, it is possible to track the printed document history using Event Viewer, but this is quite inconvenient.
Luckily, there are other ways to view Windows printer history using a third-party app, ParperCut Print Logger. First, download and install the PaperCut Print Logger tool on the PC.
After installation, the PaperCut Print Logger enables you to track and record all print jobs on your system. It will record basic information like the time of printing, the print job owner, the number of pages, and other properties, including paper size, colour mode, etc.
To view your printed document history saved by PaperCut Print Logger:
1. Open File Explorer to C: Program Files (x86) > Papercut Print Logger.
2. Click the ViewLogs shortcut twice.
3. That is why the report includes a list of printing, which we can find by the date of receipt.
4. Click the View button next to the HTML column to observe the list of printed documents for a certain day accompanied by details.
5. You can export the report in CSV format by clicking on its label CSV/Excel on the report and saving it in Excel format for data analysis.
Knowing how your printed document history can be viewed in Windows is sometimes helpful. You can use it to search for a given document or even determine whether someone was using your printer when you were unaware of it.
