Manage print jobs from command line

In one of the previous articles, we have seen how to manage printers from command line using some vbs scripts. In this article, I am going to explain how to manage the printer jobs using WMI command.  We will learn how to pause the printer jobs, how to resume the paused jobs, how to delete the stuck up printer jobs.

First, let’s see the list of jobs we have in the queues. For this you need to run the below command.

wmic printjob get

The above will list all the jobs in progress/queue. It prints lot of details about each printer job. To print only the minimal information we are interested in, we can use the below command.

wmic printjob get jobid, document, jobstatus

Example:

c:\>wmic printjob get jobid, document, jobstatus
Document      JobId  JobStatus
BankStatement  2      Error/Restart

Cancel print job
You can cancel a print job using the below command. We need to provide the job id in the command.

wmic printjob where jobid=<jobnumber> delete

Example:

wmic printjob where jobid=2 delete

Pause a print job

This command too would require you to specify the job id.

wmic printjob where jobid=<jobnumber> pause

Example:

c:\>wmic printjob where jobid=2 pause
Executing (\\WINCMD-PC\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_PrintJob.Name="Myprinter, 2")->Pause()
Method execution successful.
Out Parameters:
instance of __PARAMETERS
{
        ReturnValue = 0;
};
c:\>wmic printjob get jobid, document, jobstatus
Document    JobId  JobStatus
BankStatement  2      Paused

Resume a paused print job

wmic printjob where jobid=<jobnumber> resume