Print current date on each document

[mcavoyr]

I am using a HP Laserjet 1320 printer, USB-connected to my PC with Windows 10-64 bit OS. It works fine, except that I want to configure the printer to print the current date on each document. I can't find the setting. I am using PCL5 driver recommented by Microsoft.  Can someone help?

[banhien]

Hi,

You have to do that from the document itself using its software. You can insert date, time, page number ..... in Word, Excel .... software.

Regards.

[dansdaduk]

As @banhien points out, for most printers, the only really practical way to do this at present is via optional header/trailer objects set in the source document, for those applications which support such insertions.

Many (most?) Windows printer drivers offer a Watermark feature (under Printing Preferences | Effects).

With most of these, the watermarks that can be added are limited to a few fixed text fields, and their position and size is also limited.

Some printer drivers support adding the current username to the Watermark feature; a few (generally current and more expensive printers, for example Colour LaserJet Enterprise M553x) can instead use the current date and time in the Watermark:

I haven't tried this yet, so don't know what control there is over positioning, etc.

[mcavoyr]

Thanks for those tips. I want to automatically date each printout, even ones from the web, so the header/footer option in Office will not do the trick. The watermark idea is right on the money, and I am using it to date docs printed on another brand of printer. However, the Laserjet 1320 with PCL5 driver, while it does watermarks, does not include dates as an option. Is there another driver for this printer that does?

[banhien]

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@mcavoyr wrote:

Thanks for those tips. I want to automatically date each printout, even ones from the web, ..

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@mcavoyr

The one on the web should print out date, time, .... . Which browser are you using ?

Regards.

[dansdaduk]

The details I posted in my earlier response about the driver options available with a Colour LaserJet Enterprise M553x printer were actually showing the options available with the latest HP Universal Printer Driver (PCL6) (version 6.2.1).

I thought that the PCL6 UPD did not support the (relatively old) LaserJet1320n printer (because I thought that it generated a later Class/Revision of the PCL XL protocol than the C/R 2.0 supported by this printer model).

However, the latest PCL6 UPD does appear to support this printer, on my Windows 10 Professional 64-bit system.

[As an aside, note that HP no longer provide a PCL5 UPD].

Using this driver, I configured the watermark:

Then used this driver to print a (very basic) NotePad document, with the following result (showing just the top of the page):

Although you can select the date/time format, and the font, font size and darkness, the watermark is always positioned at the top-right of the page.

i.e. you can not specify the position, unlike the case where you select one of the fixed-text watermarks: