I want users to print in black and white by default, while still allowing them to choose color for an individual job. After that one color print, the next job should automatically return to black and white.
The print server is already configured with black-and-white printing defaults, but Windows stores a user's changed preferences locally. If someone selects color, that choice persists for future jobs instead of reverting to the server default. We currently remove the relevant per-user registry settings with a scheduled script, but the newer unified Windows print dialog appears to bypass that approach, and applications such as Edge may handle print settings independently.
We are considering either forcing the legacy print dialog or moving our HP printers to the HP Universal Print Driver and managing the defaults through Group Policy. Which approach is more reliable, or is there a better solution?
3 Answers
Setting Printing Defaults on the server and using the correct driver is still worth doing, but those are only defaults. A user's profile can save an override, so changing the server setting will not necessarily reset an existing user's preference. The HP Universal Print Driver and HP policy tools may give you more control, but they will not change the basic behavior of per-user saved settings in every application.
If you manage the queues centrally, limit printer administration permissions as well. Anyone with sufficient administrative access can change shared printer defaults, potentially affecting every client that receives them. For the user experience you described, separate enforced mono and color queues are generally more predictable than trying to continually delete settings from each user's profile.
The most practical solution is usually to create two queues for the same physical printer: one named something like “Printer - Mono” with black-and-white enforced, and another named “Printer - Color” with color enabled. Deploy both through Group Policy and make the mono queue the normal choice. Users who genuinely need color select the color queue for that job, so their choice does not permanently change the default settings of the regular queue.
We use this setup specifically because users kept leaving printers set to color. Having separate mono and color queues made the choice explicit and stopped the setting from carrying over.
That is the issue we are seeing: the server defaults apply initially, but once a user chooses color, the local profile wins until its printer preference data is removed.