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Working with printers in Windows

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This sample only applies to Windows platforms.

You can use PowerShell to manage printers using WMI and the WScript.Network COM object from WSH.

Listing printer connections

The simplest way to list the printers installed on a computer is to use the WMI Win32_Printer class:

Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_Printer

You can also list the printers using the WScript.Network COM object that's typically used in WSH scripts:

(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).EnumPrinterConnections()

Because this command returns a simple string collection of port names and printer device names without any distinguishing labels, it isn't easy to interpret.

Adding a network printer

To add a new network printer, use WScript.Network:

(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).AddWindowsPrinterConnection("\\Printserver01\Xerox5")

Setting a default printer

To use WMI to set the default printer, find the printer in the Win32_Printer collection and then invoke the SetDefaultPrinter method:

$printer = Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_Printer -Filter "Name='HP LaserJet 5Si'"
Invoke-CimMethod -InputObject $printer -MethodName SetDefaultPrinter

WScript.Network is a little simpler to use, because it has a SetDefaultPrinter method that takes only the printer name as an argument:

(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).SetDefaultPrinter('HP LaserJet 5Si')

Removing a printer connection

To remove a printer connection, use the WScript.Network RemovePrinterConnection method:

(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).RemovePrinterConnection("\\Printserver01\Xerox5")