Disabling Printing in Edge Chromium

Written by Eric Wyatt (last updated February 8, 2021)

1

Chris reached out asking for help with a particular problem that he was researching. The problem is that he wants to disable the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser from being able to print. His computer is a communal one with one account accessed by multiple employees all during work hours. For his situation group policies won't work as the employees need ready access to the system and switching accounts will slow the employees down too much. The solution for this predicament is best suited to using Registry Editor.

  1. PressÊWin+R. Windows opens the Run window.
  2. Type "regedit" (without quotes) and pressÊEnter. Windows opens the Registry Editor.
  3. In the left-side panel, navigate to this portion of the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
  4. If you don't see a subkey called "Edge" you will need to create a new subkey and name it (without quotes) "Edge". You will see what appears to be a folder in the left side titled NamingTemplates.
  5. Select the new subkey that you created. (You can do this by clicking on it once.)
  6. In a blank area of the right-hand window, right-click and choose New>DWORD (32-bit) Value from the pop-up window. This creates a new, unnamed data value.
  7. Name the new data value "PrintingEnabled" (without quotes) and pressÊEnterÊto commit the new name. You should see two Reg_SZ data values in the right-hand window—one called (Default) and the other is the new PrintingEnabled value you just created.
  8. Double-click on the PrintingEnabled value. This opens the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box.
  9. In the Value Data field enter a "0" (without quotes) to disable printing or a "1" (again without quotes) to enable printing. (See Figure 1.)

    10. Figure 1. PrintingEnabled with new value data entered.

  10. Click OK to close the dialog box.
  11. Close the Registry Editor. The changes you made take effect immediately.

With this Registry Editor modification, Chris can now disable printing and reenable it whenever he wants for his employees.

 This tip (13820) applies to Windows 10.

Author Bio

Eric Wyatt

Eric Wyatt is a swell guy (or so his friends tell him). He is a formally trained designer and branding expert, bringing a wide range of skills to his Tips.Net articles. ...

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What is 7 + 1?

2021-02-08 09:34:28

Graham

I don't need to disable Edge printing, however I want to change the print dialogue.

I don't like the default print dialogue because of the need to scroll to see the "Print on both sides", "more settings" and "Print using system dialogue" options.

A more compact dialogue would be helpful. In fact the original "system dialogue" is ideal, it only lacks an automatic "print preview". I really do not understand why Microsoft replaced it?
Does anybody know if there a setting that I can change to make "system dialogue" the default option, without manually selecting it every time?

However my biggest problem is that the standard Edge print dialogue attempts to override my existing printer settings.
I have a single HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus. This is setup as THREE separate printer options.
1.) Tray 1 Black only, 2.) Tray 1 Colour, 3.) Tray 2, for special paper, black only.
This is my preferred method of controlling the printing for ALL applications, not just browsing.

As an example in "Microsoft Edge (Chromium)" when I ask it to print from Tray 2 (which should be black on special paper) it produces a colour printout from Tray 1 (standard paper).
I can manually set it to print in black which continues in the session. When I close Edge and then reopen the browser it goes back to printing in colour.

Any suggestions for both the 'overriding' issue and the lack of function for the extension?

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