Allow printing of PDF papers within Mendeley Desktop

A simple "Print" menu under File would be good. Control-P doesn't even work now though.

3,154 votes

Shaneal Manek shared this idea · Aug 20, 2009 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

Anonymous shared a merged idea: PLEASE ADD A PRINT OPTION !!!! PLEASEEEEEE · Jul 26, 2012 ·

Chris Watters shared a merged idea: Maybe I'm just missing something but I would have expected to have the ability to directly print the pdf file from the desktop. · Jul 7, 2012 ·

Bissan shared a merged idea: Print feature · May 29, 2012 ·

Zhimin shared a merged idea: Please add a "print" function in the toolbar. · Nov 11, 2010 ·

James Williams shared a merged idea: Add ability to print PDFs from Mendeley · Oct 15, 2009 ·

kosyo.markov shared a merged idea: PDF print option · Jul 27, 2009 ·

under review ·

AdminMendeley (Admin, Mendeley) responded · Oct 25, 2012

We are aware how requested this feature is and have tried to implement it in previous versions of Mendeley, however there have been some issues with the setup in the past. We would still like to include this in a future build, however, the current way to print documents in Mendeley is to right-click them and ‘Open Externally’, and print them out from the default PDF viewer.

165 comments

Robert Grigg commented · May 14, 2013 12:58 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Now the right-click "Open Externally" option has disappeared and all I get is "Add Note". Please add the print option because you do use PDFTron http://www.pdftron.com/ and it does have a print method.
AdminMendeley (Admin, Mendeley) commented · April 23, 2013 9:02 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Bella,

You can currently export PDF files from Mendeley Desktop with annotations and notes by opening the file in the program and clicking File >Export PDF With Annotations. These annotations can then be printed from an external PDF reader. Hope this helps!
Bella Veksler commented · April 22, 2013 11:36 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Currently, opening the pdf externally does not preserve any annotations, notes, or highlights which limits the usefulness of this feature, either include an "open externally with notes" feature or have the print functionality right in mendeley to allow for this
Roberto Mosca commented · April 10, 2013 3:14 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Print is notoriously one of the trickiest features in all the operating systems... ;) I am not surprised it is taking more than 4 years to implement it...
Anonymous commented · April 4, 2013 8:50 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Why in the world is this taking so long?
Neil Girdhar commented · March 26, 2013 10:06 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Yes, I totally agree with just making the external PDF view the default way to print. Mendeley should focus on what it does best — not displaying and printing PDFs.
Geoffrey Fairchild commented · February 28, 2013 4:42 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

@Frodo, while that's true, Mendeley can't (or shouldn't) presuppose installation of any existing PDF reader on the user's system. Theoretically, Mendeley should be able to be installed on a freshly reformatted computer and *just work*.

Also, from a programmer's point of view, imagining trying to keep up with whatever command line arguments each PDF reader supports is a nightmare. Gotta remember cross-platform support is important for Mendeley, too.

I see where you're going, but it's not really practical. Mendeley needs to implement this themselves in order to do it right.
Frodo commented · February 13, 2013 2:18 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

@Geoffrey

The comparable switches exist for most readers. If you support Acrobat, Foxit, Nitro and Sumatra, you'll have 75% of the windows users covered.

Print a PDF file silently to the default printer:
"Foxit Reader.exe" /p PdfFile

Print a PDF file silently to an alternative printer:
"Foxit Reader.exe" /t PdfFile PrinterName

Print PDF to a physical printer

Nitro Pro: NitroPDF.exe /p <PATH_TO_FILES>

Sumatra:
-print-to-default $file.pdf prints a PDF file on a default printer
-print-to $printer_name $file.pdf prints a PDF on a given printer
-print-dialog $file.pdf opens a PDF file and shows a print dialog to select printer and printing options
-exit-on-print when -print-to-default or -print-to is used, will exit after printing
Chris Parker commented · February 13, 2013 2:06 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Nice idea, although Mendeley does help me work paperless...
Geoffrey Fairchild commented · February 11, 2013 10:15 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Frodo, that solution requires Acrobat. Lots of us use alternative, lighter PDF readers (readers built into Firefox and Chrome, Sumatra PDF, Foxit Reader, OSX Preview, etc.).
Frodo commented · February 11, 2013 1:50 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

This can be implemented in a matter of minutes:

AcroRd32.exe /p pathname — Executes Adobe Reader and displays the Print
dialog box.
AcroRd32.exe /t path "printername" "drivername" "portname" —
Initiates Adobe Reader and prints a file, whose path must be fully specified, while
suppressing the Printdialog box.
The four parameters of the /toption evaluate to path, printername, drivername,
and portname(all strings).
● printername— The name of your printer.
● drivername— Your printer driver’s name, as it appears in your printer’s properties.
● portname— The printer’s port. portnamecannot contain any "/" characters; if it
does, output is routed to the default port for that printer.
Maria Nikolaevna commented · January 23, 2013 3:39 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

Agree there must be printing! That is just impossible not to have it!
psola commented · January 14, 2013 7:03 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

even Notepad can print :P
psola commented · January 14, 2013 7:00 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

and while you are implementing, make it possible to select multiple documents to print. mendeley makes it really easy to find the literature you need, but it becomes painfull if you want to print them, because then you have to export them one by one to a place, then open the file manager, browse to the place, select them all, press the enter, wait till they are all open, go to file menu print, then ok (if you want to print dubblesided or anything then change the settings, close the document or go to next, go to file menu etc and repeat and repeat...
Evgen commented · January 8, 2013 3:30 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

This feature should be implemented as soon as possible, because its really annoying when you can not print a document.
Chris Penfold commented · December 3, 2012 4:28 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

How about including an option to 'open externally' when viewing the pdf (rather than having to go back to the library)??
Alan commented · November 21, 2012 8:19 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

It does seem odd that this hasn't been implemented, pretty basic feature...
Anonymous commented · November 16, 2012 4:32 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

It's amazing that we still can't print. Why not?
Igor commented · November 7, 2012 2:41 a.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

I totally agree that this feature should be implemented!!!
Anonymous commented · October 21, 2012 7:00 p.m. · Flag as inappropriate · Delete

In libaray > open externally ..
and you can see your pdf in acrobat reader.
and can print too..