Windows spooling service

The application can go back to its normal tasks. You will notice a brief period as Excel prepares the document and hands off the print request to the Spooler. And during that time, a helpful window will announce that Excel is printing. However Excel is really sending the spreadsheet to the Spooler i. After the window has disappeared i. Excel is done spooling , you will be free to edit your spreadsheet while the actual printing proceeds simultaneously.

You can even close Excel! None of that matters to the Spooler, which will ensure that your spreadsheet makes it to the printer — independent of Excel. Ever printed several, lengthy documents at the same time? The Spooler makes that possible — without overwhelming your printers. The Spooler maintains a queue of requests a print queue for each printer on your computer. When you print a document, the Spooler:. Type the word printers into the search box and click the View devices and printers link on the left:.

Find your printer in the list. A window showing all pending print jobs will come up. Here we see one item for Administrator — a text file printed from the Notepad application:. For example, if your printer temporarily disappears from the network, the Spooler will wait a reasonable time for the device to come back before declaring a failure.

And if your request to print a single page is stuck behind a page behemoth, the Spooler will ensure that your document gets its turn, eventually. Nothing can be printed when the Spooler service is stopped. And if you try to print without the service running, Windows will insist that no printers are installed:. Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.

Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services. Privacy policy. The print spooler service is a service that is running on each computer that participates in the Print Services system. The print spooler service implements the print client and print server roles, by enabling each participating system to act as a print client, administrative client, or print server for the Print Services system.

The following are the methods for you to restart Print Spooler. The easiest way to reset or restart the print spooler is using Task Manager. The steps are listed below:. Step 1 : Right-click the Start button and choose Task Manager. Step 3 : Scroll down to locate the Spooler service, right-click it, and choose Restart. Step 3 : In the command console, input net stop spooler and press the Enter key to stop Print Spooler. Step 5 : Now, you can go back to Command Prompt, type net start spooler , and press Enter to start print spooler.

You can also perform the same operation in the Services app. Besides, you can make more changes in the service here.