Often when printing documents on my Canon Pixma MP600 printer I would like to print the last page first, eliminating the need to re-order the pages once they have printed. However, I am unable to make the printer achieve this behaviour. Can you provide advice on how this could be done?

The decision as to which page to print first and last is generally handled by the printer driver within Windows. In most cases, when you go to the “Print” menu option in an application the Print window will appear, allowing you to select the printer and other options. Clicking on the “Properties” button next to the printer will display the printer properties and settings. Most printers have an option within this window detailing the order in which the pages should be printed. Looking through the manual for the Canon Pixma MP600 I found some screen shots of the driver properties window, but there does not appear to be anything specifically relating to page ordering. The closest setting which I could find was on the “Page Setup” tab where there is a “Reverse Order” checkbox. Presumably, this will reverse the order in which the pages are printed. Try ticking this option and then click OK. Once back at the main application print window, try printing the document to check whether this addresses the problem.

Should this work, that setting will only remain set for the current session in that program. Once you close and reopen the program it will default to the unticked state (i.e. no reversing of page order). Likewise, if you open a different program it will also be at the default unticked state. You probably want to permanently modify the setting so that it remains ticked as the default. To do this, go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel”. Open the “Printers and Faxes” control panel (you may need to first open the “Printers and Other Hardware” category, if the control panel is being displayed in category view). You should see your printer displayed in the list of printers. Right-click on your printer and select “Properties”. In the properties window that appears, click the “Advanced” tab and the “Printing Defaults” button. This should produce the same window as you previously used when modifying the printing preferences. However, the settings which you configure in this Printing Defaults window will become the default settings for all applications. This can be useful for situations such as yours, where you wish to define the page printing order, or you can also define other useful defaults (e.g. if you have a colour printer and want all pages to default to grayscale unless you explicitly specify that you want colour printed). Once you have finished configuring the default settings, click OK and then OK in the parent window. Restart any open programs from which you wish to print (so they can obtain the new settings) and you should find that the settings just configured are now the defaults, so your document prints with the last page first.

Be aware, the above instructions assume that the “Reverse Order” setting does actually reverse the order of the printed pages. I have not been able to test this theory, since I do not have the same model printer as yourself (and trying the drivers without the correct printer does not provide an accurate testing scenario). If this setting does not produce the desired results then there does not appear to be any other settings in the print drivers that come with the printer to produce this result. Therefore, as a next step you could check whether there are any updated printer drivers on the Canon website (www.canon.com.au) for the printer which may support such a feature.

If you are still stuck without a method to achieve the printing order in the printer driver itself, you can configure some applications to send the document to the printer in reverse order. When you were configuring the printer to print in reverse order, this requires the printer to change the order of pages that are being sent by the application. However, if you can get the application to send the pages in reverse order in the first place, the printer won’t know the difference and will just print the document as-is, in the order of pages sent by the application. The reason that I didn’t suggest this sooner is because the entire process is application dependent and not all applications support this function. In fact, the only application that I know supports this is Microsoft Word. Since you are talking about printing documents I assume that you are using Microsoft Word. To make Word send the document to the printer in reverse order, for Word 2003 go to the “Tools” menu > “Options”. In the Options window that appears, click the “Print” tab. Under the “Printing options” heading you should see an option “Reverse print order”. Tick this option and click OK. For Word 2007, click the Office button > “Word Options”. Click the “Advanced” category and in the right-hand pane scroll down to “Printing”. Tick the option “Print pages in reverse order” and click OK. The documents should now print in reverse order.