How to get Printer Info in .NET?-Collection of common programming errors

In the standard PrintDialog there are four values associated with a selected printer: Status, Type, Where, and Comment.

If I know a printer’s name, how can I get these values in C# 2.0?

As dowski suggested, you could use WMI to get printer properties. The following code displays all properties for a given printer name. Among them you will find: PrinterStatus, Comment, Location, DriverName, PortName, etc.

using System.Management;

…

string printerName = "YourPrinterName";
string query = string.Format("SELECT * from Win32_Printer WHERE Name LIKE '%{0}'", printerName);
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
ManagementObjectCollection coll = searcher.Get();

foreach (ManagementObject printer in coll)
{
    foreach (PropertyData property in printer.Properties)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}: {1}", property.Name, property.Value));
    }
}

This should work.

using System.Drawing.Printing;

…

PrinterSettings ps = new PrinterSettings();
ps.PrinterName = "The printer name"; // Load the appropriate printer's setting

After that, the various properties of PrinterSettings can be read.

Note that ps.isValid() can see if the printer actually exists.

Edit: One additional comment. Microsoft recommends you use a PrintDocument and modify its PrinterSettings rather than creating a PrinterSettings directly.

Please notice that the article that dowski and Panos was reffering to (MSDN Win32_Printer) can be a little misleading.

I’m referring the first value of most of the arrays. some begins with 1 and some begins with 0. for example, “ExtendedPrinterStatus” first value in table is 1, therefore, your array should be something like this:

string[] arrExtendedPrinterStatus = { 
    "","Other", "Unknown", "Idle", "Printing", "Warming Up",
    "Stopped Printing", "Offline", "Paused", "Error", "Busy",
    "Not Available", "Waiting", "Processing", "Initialization",
    "Power Save", "Pending Deletion", "I/O Active", "Manual Feed"
};

and on the other hand, “ErrorState” first value in table is 0, therefore, your array should be something like this:

string[] arrErrorState = {
    "Unknown", "Other", "No Error", "Low Paper", "No Paper", "Low Toner",
    "No Toner", "Door Open", "Jammed", "Offline", "Service Requested",
    "Output Bin Full"
};

BTW, “PrinterState” is obsolete, but you can use “PrinterStatus“.

Just for reference, here is a list of all the available properties for a printer ManagementObject.

usage: printer.Properties["PropName"].Value

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in a Windows environment, but I would suggest that you look at using WMI.