Duplex printing offers great advantages to the business and home user for printing. Some models have the duplexer built in as standard equipment and most have a manual duplexer. Manual duplexing requires the user to place the page back into the printer to have the second side printed on, but this does not save time or increase productivity. The advantage really comes into play when you have an auto duplexer installed in the printing unit. Having this feature should be considered at the time of purchase. If you are unsure of your needs, look into printers that can have it added as an upgrade, although this is typically more expensive.

If the auto duplexer is part of the device at purchase then set up is simple; it will install and configure with the printer itself. Adding duplexing as an upgrade will need you to add more memory in some cases. This is a specification that varies between manufacturers and models and is easily obtained from documentation typically found online. Some auto duplexing units are large external attachments and will need a little extra space in some cases. Most companies have an installation disk that ships with or is included with the auto duplexing unit that will take you through the configuration process.

If you need to configure the duplexer manually, locate the printer utility in your start menu. In the utility there will be a work group or workstation configuration menu. This may be named something else depending upon the manufacturer; terms like network configuration or a duplex configuration menu. You will need to tell the utility that the printer is a duplex capable model by clicking yes or typing in yes in the text box provided under the proper utility menu. Most auto duplex documents are sent to the printer with the duplexing data after configuration allowing for less intervention by the end user.