print spool backup

On Windows 7 I had this application that kept all print jobs as files.
So, anything that was printed, was available as a file in a specific format.

I found that to be a great functionality, but unfortunately the application didn't work anymore on Windows 10.
And since then, I was looking for something that does the same.

The basic behaviour of Windows is to delete all print jobs alongside with all info of these jobs, after printing. There's no option to disable that cleanup, and that is what I'm looking for here ..

pepanee said:

Do this:
How To Fix a Missing Print To PDF Feature In Windows 11/10

Then after whenever you print something, do another "print" and make a PDF of that file that you printed.

Yeah, that technically works, but you would need to print everything twice.

Berton said:

Using Print to PDF does not create a paper output but allows saving as a .pdf file which, if necessary, can be printed later or attached to an E-Mail, I use it frequently.

That is correct,
however what I need is this:

I may have printed whatever, at whatever time in the past, and I may have either lost it, or temporarily be unaware of the location of that document.
I may not know where I printed it from (a mail, the internet browser, my USB-stick, some file on my 2 TB disk ?),
so in that case I can just go to the print archive,
look at the correct document,
and do whatever I want with it: print it again, look at it, save it as a file, send it via mail, make a PDF of it, whatever.

That is what I need.

The fact somebody else actually made a program to do exactly this, indicates there is a need.
Windows lacks many functionality, so I don't expect it to find it there,
even less now that the anti-print police is trying to make it as hard as possible to print, well, anything.

pepanee said:

I found this for you. Apparently it enables a log file of your print history of anything you print, in Windows 10:
How to Check Your Printed Document History in Windows 10

That's it !

It's just an option on Printer level, maybe it was all along, but I didn't know.

And there also is 3rd party software mentioned; PaperCut Print Logger - free print logging software for Windows | PaperCut
May have a try with it.

I think the one I remember was SPLViewer, but I can't get it working as it should. It displays print jobs already run (as also seen from Windows spool), but can't show any detail of those jobs.

Been testing for some weeks now

The print jobs indeed remain in the Print Queue

The problem now is that obviously, you'd like to view the content of such a job.
In the tool I had earlier (as listed before) these were actual files with specific extensions, and you could open them, view the content.

But, in the Print Queue, the only option is to ... re-print. Not helpful if you are looking for a given document, and the title doesn't tell a lot.

Still better than default option, but ...