Print Queue

What Does Print Queue Mean?

A print queue is a list of printer output jobs held in a reserved memory area. It maintains the most current status of all active and pending print jobs.

Techopedia Explains Print Queue

A print queue gives users printer management capabilities to facilitate control of print queue operations like pausing, resuming or canceling jobs. Some print queues allow users to prioritize print jobs and change the order of a queue.

A print queue generally displays the following information:

Document name: Shows the file name of the print job
Status: Indicates the status of the print job
Owner: Shows the user, which is helpful in a shared network printing environment
Pages: Shows the total number of printed pages
Size: Shows the printed document size, usually in KB
Submitted: Shows the date and timestamp of a pending or printed document
Port: Shows the printer port

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Margaret Rouse

Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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