Archive your print servers printouts as PDF

Unlike other PDF tools Aloaha PDF Suite is not a virtual printer driver or depends on any special printer driver. Aloaha is a print spooler monitor which installs per default the Wrocklage PDF Printer to keep the installation transparent and easy.


Below you find a real life example on how you could configure Aloaha to monitor all your printers connected to the print server. To keep the example simple we will monitor PrinterA and PrinterB.

As the first step you would obviously install Aloaha from http://www.aloaha.com/download/aloaha_pdf.zip. Per default Aloaha installs in application mode. To run silent in the background it is advised to re-reconfigure Aloaha to run as a service. Please remove the Aloaha entry from the autostart/startup folder of your start menu and exit Aloaha with a right click on the tray icon.

Now PrinterA and PrinterB need to be renamed to something else so the names can be used for the new PDF Printer later on. The advantage is that your users do not need to learn new printer names. In this example we rename PrinterA and PrinterB in PrinterA_physical and PrinterB_physical.

The next step is to open the printer manager and add 2 new Wrocklage PDF Printer. It is irrelevant to which physical ports they will be connected since they will be paused later on anyway. These 2 new Wrocklage PDF Printer shoucd be renamed to PrinterA and PrinterB.

The 2 new printers require some re-configuration. To make it easier for the administrator Aloaha includes a special configuration tool. It is called monitor.exe and can be found in the Aloaha PDF Suite installation directory. (C:\program files\wrocklage\monitor.exe) Please call this tool and right click on the new PrinterA and PrinterB (the renamed Wrocklage PDF Printer) and choose PDF prepare.
The tool will configure the print processor to use EMF and will pause the printer.

To enable the automatic hardcopy feature the tool PMonConfig.exe needs to be called from the Aloaha PDF Suite installation directory. (C:\program files\wrocklage\PMonConfig.exe)

In the upper drop down list you can choose the printer to be configured. In the drop down list at the bottom you can choose the hardcopy printer.
For this example PrinterA should be choose from the first drop down list and PrinterA_physical from the list at the the bottom.

Of course enable "Print hardcopy to printer above" should be checked.
The same steps need to be done for PrinterB

Last but not least Aloaha needs to “know” to monitor all the new printers. Please open the creator.exe from the Aloaha PDF Suite installation directory. (c:\program files\wrocklage\creator.exe)

Here you need to

1. Enable save to folder in case you want to archive every printout as PDF to disk.
2. Enable at the right bottom "Monitor all PDF prepared printer"
3. Disable "Service interactive"

As a last step you start Aloaha as a service. Open the services control panel (services.msc) and configure the PDF Suite service to start automatic and start the service.

Now you can start printing to PrinterA and PrinterB. Every document will be saved to disk as PDF and printed to the configured hardcopy printer.

Please note that every 5 seconds Aloaha will monitor one printer. That means that in your case after 2 printers x 5 seconds all printers have been checked. You can reduce the 5 seconds if you configure HKLM\Software\Aloaha\pdf\intervall to 1000



Home / Products / Aloaha PDF Suite S... / Archive prints as PDF