QuickBooks Tip – Clear “To be Printed’ Status
Sometimes in QuickBooks, I have seen 100′s or even 1,000′s of invoices or other transactions marked ‘To Be Printed’. How can you clear the ‘To be Printed’ status without printing them? You don’t want to waste all that ink and paper printing something you don’t need. You really do not want to manually edit each one and un-check the ‘To be Printed’ box.
There’s a couple of easy ways to clear the ‘To be Printed’ status of invoices or other transactions in QuickBooks without actually printing them: 
- Unplug the printer
- In QuickBooks, print the transactions to the printer
- Delete the print job from the printer
OR
- In QuickBooks, print the transactions to a PDF printer (you can get CutePDF free if you need it)
- Delete the PDF file
Either method will clear the ‘To be Printed’ status from the invoices or transactions for you — quick and easy!
About Michelle Long
Michelle L. Long, CPA is the owner of Long for Success, LLC specializing in QuickBooks consulting & training, coaching small business owners, speaking and writing. She was named one of '10 Women who Inspire a Profession' by Accounting Today and a Financial Services Champion of the Year by the SBA. She has been mentioned in the New York Times, Inc.com, Business Week, Investor's Business Daily, WebCPA and more. Michelle is the author of Successful QuickBooks Consulting and How to Start a Home Based Bookkeeping Business.
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10 Responses to “QuickBooks Tip – Clear “To be Printed’ Status”
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This is one of those helpful hints you don’t want to forget. Been there! Done that!
I like the unplug the printer option. Lol
How do I stop QB from automatically checking the ‘to be printed’ box in write checks? I have one client who handwrites checks and manually enters them. His to be printed box ALWAYS has to be cleared. Very frustrating!
@Christi — Tell them to enter a check and uncheck the ‘To be Printed’ box and save it. Then, the next check should stay unchecked too. I don’t think they can just edit a check though — they need to enter a new transaction. Then, it should remember the last setting and continue.
Great tip! How would I do that for the To Be Emailed invoices?
@Mindy — Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out a way to clear all the ‘To be Sent’ items at once. In the Send Forms window, click remove on each one. At least you don’t have to edit each one!
I don’t know a way to execute a mass dump of the “to be sent” que, but you can turn off the settings instead of open a dummy document to prevent future pile ups.
You can clear all of the “to be sent” items if you use Outlook. If you want to clear the “to be sent” items all at once, disconnect from the internet temporarily. Go to Edit>Preferences>Send Forms. Make sure the preferences are set to “Send e-mail using Outlook.” You can go back and change it when you are through if this is not your preference. Go to File>Send Forms. Send all those that you want to clear. Open Outlook. Go to your Outbox. Delete all of the e-mails you just sent. Now you can go back and change your setting back to “Send using QB e-mail” if necessary. You are ready to reconnect to the internet. Even if you don’t use Outlook, it may be worth setting it up temporarily just in order to get these cleared.
I get that message, but there is nothing there to print. I think it appeared when I moved from 2011 to 2012. I would love to make it go away. Any ideas?
Deborah Adams
Try marking one invoice to print and then print it to see if it clears it out.
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