A Printing Time and Money Saver

Here's the tip: use the "Fast Draft" mode in your printer settings when printing documents for simple internal review. This mode will print your documents 2-3 times faster than "Normal" mode, and also uses significantly less toner. It will save you a ton of time and money, especially on longer multiple-page documents. And the print quality is JUST FINE for reviewing draft documents, making copies, or for simple internal distribution.

And if you've ever attended one of my programs on time or e-mail management, you know that I recommend you print out all e-mails that will take longer than 3-minutes to process or respond to, so that you can then sort those e-mails for prioritized processing according to urgency and/or importance. Fast Draft is the perfect mode for printing those e-mails, and once printed and sorted into your Priority file, you can then either delete those e-mails or move those e-mails out of your inbox into the appropriate e-mail archival file folder in your e-mail account, thus helping to manage your e-mail inbox. No need to print the e-mail at high quality, since you simply need a readable version that can be later tossed or shredded upon completion.

Here's how to use the "Fast Draft" mode in a Windows environment. With any open document or web page, go to the "File" drop down menu and select "Print". This will bring up the Print Manager screen. Click on the "Preferences" button, and you will see a screen with several possible tabs to select to configure your print job. The first tab is "Paper/Quality", and you will see in the lower righthand corner of this screen "Print Quality". It usually defaults to "Normal", but instead, select "FastDraft", and then select "OK". Your document will now print in Fast Draft mode – faster and with less toner.

Now, if you'd like to avoid having to do all of these steps every time, consider setting up a “Print Quick Set”. Before hitting "OK" after you select “FastDraft”, go up to the "Print Task Quick Sets" drop down menu, and select the "Draft text or text with color printing" option, then click the "Save" button. Then, whenever you have a draft print job, you can just select the "Print Quick Set", and your job will print in Fast Draft mode. I even created a new "Print Quick Set" that allows you to print in Fast Draft mode and also just in black and white – that can help you save more on expensive color toner too. Save time. Save money. Print faster. This is definitely a very useful tip!