Help Using Tray Selector

Tray Selector makes it simple for you to select a printer tray profile for your documents. Once you have installed Tray Selector, the next time you open Word you will see the Tray Selector ribbon bar. This consists of two buttons, Main and Settings

To configure Tray Selector for one-click printing, click on Settings.

The Tray Selector dialogue box appears. From here you can configure up to twenty different Tray Selector profiles. Each profile, once configured, appears as a button in the Tray Selector ribbon bar, allowing single-click printing of your chosen printer tray selections.

Here are some examples of common Tray Selector profiles:

Letterhead: Every page is printed on Letterhead paper.

Letterhead 1st: The first page is printed on Letterhead, with subsequent pages printed on plain paper.

Plain: All pages are printed on plain paper.

You can also configure Tray Selector to select printer trays containing coloured paper, envelopes and even labels – all with the click of a single button.

Once you have clicked on Settings, click in the Profile Name box. Now type in a descriptive name for your printer tray selection profile that means something to you. For this example, we are going to use the name Letterhead 1st, as we want a button that, in one click, will print the 1st page on letterhead and every other page on blank paper.

Ensure that the Show in Toolbar tick box is checked (this only happens by default in profile 1).

Under Select Printer, click on the drop-down arrow and select the printer to use for this profile button (all printers you have installed will appear in the dropdown list). The available paper trays for that printer now appear under the First Page and Other Pages boxes.

In the First Page box, select the printer tray from which you want the paper for the first page of your letter/document to come. In this example, our headed paper is stored in the "Tray 1" tray – yours may be different.

In the Other Pages box, select the printer tray from which you want the subsequent pages of your letter/document to come. In this example, we want plain paper for our other pages, which is stored in our "Tray 2" tray – again, yours may be different.

Click OK and your button is setup. Each time it is clicked it will send page 1 to Tray 1 and other pages to Tray 2. By selecting different tabs at the top of the settings dialog you can setup up to 20 different buttons.

Once you have setup a button profile using the settings button click OK and you'll see your button on the ribbon bar. Simply click this button and your current document will be printed in the way you setup. This provides a one click short cut to print over and over again in the way you have pre-set.

You can have up to twenty different Tray Selector profile buttons for any printer tray selections that you may require. Each of these profiles creates a button in Word to let you print to your chosen combination of paper trays with a single mouse click.

Create an additional Tray Selector profile, click on Settings again, then the Profile 2 tab, and then follow the instructions above to configure your profile. Note that if you have more than one printer, you can allocate different profiles to different printers – just select the appropriate printer from the drop-down menu.

N.B. Make sure for any subsequent profiles that you check the Show in Toolbar tick box.

From time to time, you may need to make changes to your existing printer tray selection profiles; for example, you may add a new printer to your system. To make any changes, click on Settings, then select the tab of the profile name you wish to make a change to. Make your changes, click on OK, and your changes will be effective immediately.

You may have noticed that in each profile tab there is a section that allows you to print a number of different copies of the same document (see the picture). By clicking the arrows buttons or typing the number of copies you can change the number of copies to print. Clicking the profile button now will print this number of copies.

Yes, you can. By default, Tray Selector will only send the first page to the first selected paper tray and all other pages to a different tray. You can, however, change it so that it will print more than one page to the first tray and the remaining pages to a different tray. To do this, simply click the + and – buttons shown in the picture below. For duplex printing, set this option to 2.

Many of our users use Tray Selector with duplex printers. In order to do this, they often add a new printer in the “Add Printers” tab which points to the same physical printer and then name it “….duplex”. They then access the properties of this printer, and turn on the duplex printing so that all pages to this printer will be printed duplex. In Tray Selector, the duplex (and non-duplex) versions of the printer will show in the Select Printer drop-down list, so you can configure profiles to either print duplex or not. This is a very powerful feature of Tray Selector, giving the user single-click access to either duplex or non-duplex printing

If you are printing duplex to letter-headed paper, there is one important step you must carry out. Due to the way that the paper is routed from the paper bin to the stacked output, almost all duplex printers must print on the back side of the page first. This is then flipped over and the front side is printed, and lastly it is output to the collection tray. This means that headed paper must be inserted in the paper bin the “wrong way round” compared with how it is normally placed in the bin if printing non-duplex. This means that if you are printing to headed paper and the paper is placed in the duplex position in the bin, you must always print duplex (even if you only want to print one page)

If you want to set up two Tray Selector button profiles – one to print duplex and another to print single-sided on the same printer – then you must make a few changes to your system first. We have produced an online duplex printing tutorial to explain how to do this here.

Tray Selector allows you to print a second print job to another printer with all the usual printer tray selection options. Using this method, you can set up various advanced printing options – for example printing your documents to a PDF file and as a hard copy to a printer – with a single click.

To achieve this, click the "Advanced Copies…" button (as shown below). A new dialogue box will open allowing you to select another printer, tray combination and number of copies to print. By default this feature is turned off. Increase the number of copies from 0 to however many you require to turn it on. You can also select a different or the same printer and chose different tray settings for this extra printer.

If you have a Mail Merge document and want to print it using Tray Selector it is quite simple. Setup your Mail Merge document in word and preview it to ensure it is correct in the usual way.

Once you are sure your data is correct. At this point do not click finish and merge. Instead click your Tray Selector button. Tray Selector should then automatically recognize that the document is a mail merge and display the dialog box (shown) prompting you to take action.

If you click Each letter then each merged letter of your document will be printed using your Tray Selector settings. Clicking Current letter will just print the current document (i.e. unmerged) and clicking Cancel will print nothing.

You can also check the box to turn off the autodetect of mail merge and always print the current document

You might forget the number of copies each profile prints or which printer it sends copies to. For a quick reminder, just place your mouse over the profile button and it will show this information as shown.

Click the settings button and select the profile from which you want to print an envelope. Click the envelope button on the settings dialog box button. Another dialogue box as shown will appear.

Check the box to enable envelope printing and select the printer you want the envelope to be sent to. Also select an option to state if you want the envelope dialogue box to be shown before or after the main printing. Click OK.

Now, when the profile button is clicked it will also show the normal Word envelopes dialogue box allowing you to print an envelope too. Note that the printer used for envelope printing will be the one you selected. The tray used can be changed within the envelope dialogue box, and once you have selected the printer tray you want to use, this will be remembered for all future envelope printing jobs.

By checking the Mask to default printer checkbox shown Tray Selector will try to use your current default printer even if you setup the particular profile button using a different printer. This can be useful if you have a roaming profile and use different printers within a particular office. Please be aware however that the default printer must be able to support the same settings (e.g. same trays ) to the printer you used to setup the original profile. In other words it works best when an office has all the same or similar types of printers. If this is not the case you might experience some unusual behaviour.

TraySelector allows you to setup profile buttons that call macros before or after printing. You can define your own macros in files like normal.dot or elsewhere and call them

On the settings dialog for each profile there is a macros button (the icon is a computer) shown in the picture below.

Clicking this button will open the macros dialog box allowing you to specify a macro that is run directly before and after the printing assigned to that profile button. Only one macro can be called by you but you can of course call other macros from within your user defined macro.

A macro can be called with up to 5 arguments. String or integer arguments can be supplied. Strings should not be quoted.

So for example if you have defined a macro in your normal.dot file as below

Sub AboutToPrint(s As String)
    MsgBox s
End Sub
                    

that you want to call before your profile prints, then you setup your macros in the dialog box as shown below. Clicking the profile button will now first call AboutToPrint with the string “TraySelector” which will display a MessageBox on the screen

You can call a macro with between zero and 5 arguments. Tray Selector uses a call to Application.Run details hereto run the macros specified. If you prefix your macro name with a “!” then TraySelector will use the function CallByName to call the macro details here. This alllows maximum flexibility.

You can also chain buttons together to make them call each other. This means that the user only needs to click one button and after the printing has finished, the next button will automatically be called. To do this just call the inbuilt macro TsPrintFromProfile1 to invoke the first button. TsPrintFromProfile1 up to TsPrintFromProfile20 exist. Be careful not to create a loop or TraySelector will loop around clicking each profile button.

The following VBA examples shows how this is achieved along with an example of how to make changes for number of copies etc.

Example 1. Simply click the first Tray Selector button

Sub ClickFirstButton()
    On Error GoTo TsErr
    Set tsModule = Application.COMAddIns("TraySelectorOne.AddinModule").Object
    ' Click the first tray selector button buttons are numbered starting from 1 even if they are not shown on the ribbon/toolbar.
    Call tsModule.ClickProfileButton(1)
    On Error GoTo 0
    Exit Sub

TsErr:
    MsgBox ("Error Calling TraySelector Interface")
End Sub
                    

Example 2. More complex

Sub CallTraySelector()
    On Error GoTo TsErr
    Set tsModule = Application.COMAddIns("TraySelectorOne.AddinModule").Object

    ' Set button 1 to print two copies
    Call tsModule.SetProfileButtonCopies(1, 2)
    ' Set button 1 to have two extra copies
    Call tsModule.SetProfileButtonCopiesExtra(1, 2)
    ' Set the document protect passsword in case the document is protected
    Call tsModule.SetDocumentProtectPassword("secret")

	' Set a page range for the next profile printed (works for all profiles) available from version 1.2.4 upwards
    Call tsModule.SetNextPageRange("2-3")

    ' Click the first tray selector button buttons are numbered starting from 1 even if they are not shown on the ribbon/toolbar.
    Call tsModule.ClickProfileButton(1)

	' Clear the page range set above
    Call tsModule.ClearNextPageRange

    ' set the profile button copies back to 1
    Call tsModule.SetProfileButtonCopies(1, 1)
    ' set the profile button copies for the extra copies back to 1
    Call tsModule.SetProfileButtonCopiesExtra(1, 1)

    On Error GoTo 0
    Exit Sub

TsErr:
    MsgBox ("Error Calling TraySelector Interface")
End Sub

                    

Some users have documents which repeat every X pages and they want to treat each part as a separate document, e.g. printing the first page to one tray, then the next X-1 pages to another tray, then to go back to the first tray again. To do this, just select the length of each segment on the settings dialog where it says “Apply these settings to all pages” by clicking the + or – buttons. Tray Selector will then split the document up into segments of this size and print according to your settings. Please note splitting is only done for the main print settings, not the extra copies.

Tray Selector can be used this way to split up a word document into segments and print each one the way you want.

In some cases though you may need to install or activate .Net 4. In almost all cases though .Net 4 will already be installed and activated on your version of Windows.