aurousTECH

In previous versions of Windows (back during Windows 95 days), DOS printing was an issue for legacy systems. Therefore capturing the Windows printers to make them look like vanilla LPT1: printers was done via GUI tools. However, that has been relegated to the command line with Windows XP. The "net use" command is used to map printer shares similar to providing mapped network drives. To map a shared printer as a local, DOS-accessible printer port, do the following:

• Open a command prompt (Start > Run... and type cmd in the dialog box)
• Type the following to map the printer share named "Network Printer" on the server named "PrintServer" as a LPT1: printer:
  

  net use lpt1: "\\printserver\network printer" /persistent:yes
  

• The above command requires quotes only when there are spaces in the server's name or the printer share's name. The "/persistent:yes" command at the end denotes that this command will be applied even after reboot, so it can be eliminated for temporary usage.
  
• To delete this printer in the future, you would simply type:
  

  net use lpt1: /delete

To provide access to this via Windows, you would then have to add the printer through the Add Printer wizard.

For users who use a personal Contacts address book and have a departmental one also may find it useful to have look-up information available for the non-default address books. Here's how to manage your address book in Outlook:

• Open the Outlook Address Book by going to the Tools menu and selecting Address Book (or Ctrl+Shift+B).
• In the Address Book view go to the Tools menu and select Options...
• Now you should be able to edit which address list should show up first, where to hold your personal contacts (for instance if all your contact entries go to a department-wide list), and finally also gives you the ability for the lookup order (say if the department list has entries which supersede the GAL).

One other Outlook Address Book tip: if you have an address list that doesn't show up as an Outlook Address Book, right-click it and go to Properties. Then click the Outlook Address Book tab and make sure the checkbox "Show this folder as an e-mail Address Book" is checked. Any address list you wish to hide would just require removing this checkbox.