How to check printed documents in Windows 10

Perhaps there are people who have not yet considered or have needed to access the print history, however, it is something that can be of great help to us. In this way, we will be able to know if we have printed a certain document that we cannot find now or simply if there is someone who is printing without our permission. If you still do not have this option activated on your computer, we are going to show the steps to follow to activate the print history in Windows 10 and how to view all the printed documents.

Regardless of the reason why we want to access everything that has come out of our printer, the good thing is that it is a function that we can activate manually in Windows 10. The truth is that the setting is somewhat hidden, but following the steps shown below, anyone with little knowledge can easily activate it.

Steps to follow to activate the print history

As we have just indicated, the Microsoft operating system allows us to activate this feature so that later, we can see everything that we have printed. For it:

1. We open the Windows 10 Event Viewer . We can do this by typing Event Viewer in the search box on the taskbar.
2. We display the options under Application registrations .
3. We expand the option Microsoft> Windows> PrintService .

1. We click with the right mouse button on the Operational option .
2. We select Properties .
3. In the window that opens, we go to the General tab .
4. We mark the Enable registration box .

1. We mark the option Overwrite events if necessary .
2. We click on the Apply button .
3. Click on the OK button .

In the General tab of the registry properties window, we can also indicate the maximum size of the print registry. As we can see, by default a size of 1028 KB is established.

In any case, once this is done we will have activated the Windows 10 printing history and from that moment on, everything that we print will be recorded . Now, every time we want to consult the documents that we have printed, we will have to reopen the Event Viewer and perform the steps shown below.

How to see everything you’ve printed in Windows 10

At this point many will wonder how we can see everything that has been printed. To do this, far from accessing the printer or its properties, we will have to use the Windows 10 Event Viewer again and follow these steps:

1. We open the Event Viewer .
2. We go to the right panel Actions .
3. We click on the option Open saved record .
4. A window will open with the path where the printing history is saved.
5. We open the file and we can see all the printing events.

If we navigate to the path Application records> Microsoft> Windows> PrintService and then select the Operational record, we can also see a record of all printing events in the central panel. There we can see the prints made, being able to get an idea if someone has printed something without our permission, since it shows the date and time of each event as well as information on the task performed, failed printing attempts, etc.

To be able to review all this record more easily, we can group it by categories. To do this, just click on the header of the task category column and the entire record will automatically be displayed with the events grouped by this data. So we can easily see all the prints.

Use third party software

Although from the Windows Event Viewer it is possible to have a vision of all these types of events and draw our own conclusions as to whether there is someone who is printing without our permission or accessing a history of printed documents, for many it may not be information very clear. In this case, we can always use third-party software that provides us with the long-term printing history in a simpler and more understandable way.

PaperCut Print Logger is one of the most popular and used. It is a free software that has been designed to record printing operations in Windows and that is capable of showing us all the activity of our printer in real time. Specifically, we will be shown the date and time of each printed document, the name of the user who made the printing, the total number of pages of each document, the name and titles of the printed documents and other additional information specific to the printing process.

All this data can be obtained in HTML format, in a CSV text file or in an Excel sheet, which allows analyzing certain data and obtaining statistics. We can download PaperCut Print Logger totally free from this same link to the official website of the tool .

How to check printed documents on MacOS

If instead of using a Windows PC you have a MacOS computer, you also have the possibility of accessing the printing history.

• To do this, open System Preferences on the cogwheel icon located in the dock, just at the bottom of the screen).
• In the window that will appear on the screen, click the Printers and scanners icon  .
• Select the name of the printer in the left sidebar and click the ” Open print queue …” button .
• Now you can access the list with all the files that are in the print queue, that is, that have not yet been printed
• To see the list of files that have already been printed, access the top menu and click on “Show completed prints.”
•  A window will open with a list of all printed files (including prints that were started but later canceled).
• You will be able to check the date and time of printing, the name of the user who requested the printing and the status of the operation.