Creating Local Connections to Windows NT Printers 

Prerequisites

  1. Can you already print on the printer from your PC? If not, then you must install the printer on your Windows NT PC. You can find information about this in your Windows NT documentation.

    2. You must be able to print on the printer from your PC before you can print to it from the SAP System.

  2. Make sure that the prerequisites are satisfied. To set up a local printer for a Windows NT PC, you will need to do the following:

A local connection to a Windows printer is possible only using Windows NT.

A spool server is an R/3 server that has a spool work process and therefore offers the spool service. The list of SAP Servers shows you which servers in your system are spool servers.

 

Note that shared (network) printers that you access from the Windows NT PC are considered local for purposes of R/3 printing. Example: An SAP spool server is running on an NT PC. You can define any printer the NT PC accesses as a local printer, regardless of whether the printer is directly attached to the PC or not.

Procedure

  1. Define the printer in the SAP System. Go to Spool Administration (transaction SPAD) and choose Output devices on the Devices / servers tab page. Then choose Create to create a new device definition. If you want to copy the definition of an output device, select it in the list of output devices and choose Create using template.
  2. Fill out the definition screen.

    3. The graphic displays an example of a local Windows NT connection. The following table helps you to fill out the individual fields correctly.

     

    Field

    Value

    DeviceAttributes tab page

    Device type

    Enter the device type defined in the SAP System for your printer model.

    For printer under Windows, you can also use the generic SWIN Device Type. Use this type to print to any device supported by windows, even the device type itself is not defined in the SAP System.

    For a list of device types delivered, see SAP Note 8928.

     

    Spool server

    Enter the name of the SAP spool server running on the Windows NT system. For a local connection, the SAP spool server and the Windows NT Print Manager must be running on the same system.

    For more information, see Spool Server

     

    Authorization-
    group

    To assign the output device to an authorization group, enter the name here. For more information, see Authorization Groups for Output Devices.

     

    Host spool access method

    Enter C, for local printing by way of the Windows NT print application interface. This is the recommended access method.

    Or, enter L for LPD-style local printing. For more information, see Access Method "L" for Local Printing at Windows NT.

     

    Host printer

    Enter the UNC name of the printer (name and network path) as defined in the Windows Print Manager.

    Example: \\P09330\P330

  3. Optional: Classify the device.

Choose Edit ® Classification. Choose the output type classification appropriate for this device.

Background: If you classify your servers as well, the spool system checks that the device and server classifications match. This helps you enforce an optimal output configuration.

Result

You can use the printer in the SAP System as soon as you save your new device definitions.

Status information about output requests is not available from Windows NT systems if you use access method C.

  First Page of SAP Printing Guide