How to enable a print log on Windows 10
You can print from almost any app on your system. Even a complex app like Photoshop has a print dialog built-in. For apps that do not have a print option, you can use the system print option to print documents or images created by the app. While printing is common place for apps, keeping a log of print jobs isn’t. It isn’t exactly practical because if you wanted to view a complete print log on Windows 10, you’d want to view it in one place, and not by opening several apps individually.
Windows 10 can keep a log of all the print jobs that are executed on a system however, by default the print log isn’t enabled. Here’s how you can enable it.
Print log on Windows 10
In order to enable the print log on Windows 10, you need to access the Event viewer. You can search for it in Windows search.
Once you have Event viewer open, expand Application and Services log>Microsoft>Windows>PrintService.
You will see two event types here; Admin, and Operational. If you’ve never enabled print logs before, right-click Operational and from the context menu select, Properties. On the General tab, enable the ‘Enable logging’ option, and you’re good to go.
From this point forward, all print jobs that you send to any printer configured on your system will be logged here.
To view print logs, you have to open the Event Viewer, and return to the same location as above. After you’ve enabled logging, this section will show you a list of every print job that was executed on your system.
The print log tells you when a document was printed, and if you’re printing an actual hard copy instead of printing to PDF it will also tell you which document was printed. The following log shows the event that was created when a print job was sent to the Microsoft Print to PDF printer option. It gives the date and time of the print job, as well as which user initiated the print job if you go to the Details tab.
The print job has its own Event ID which means, if you need to, you can also filter the events by the Event ID. Check the event ID assigned to various print jobs and create custom views in the Event Viewer to filter them all out.
The Event ID will not give you more information about the event than the log does. It’s basically the same thing except you can access the log file directly if you need to.
