There are a number of indirect ways that you can trick Windows 7 into printing from a shared printer attached to a Macintosh machine, but the best way to do it is through Bonjour. That’s because with every version change - either between Windows or OS X - the process gets muddled and a new solution has to be devised. But Bonjour has been fairly reliable even as both operating systems have evolved.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to set up your OS X machine so that its shared printers are available to Windows 7 machines. After that, we’ll show you how to print a document from a Windows 7 machine using a Macintosh shared printer.

NOTE: Even though the guide was created on previous versions of OS X, it has been tested also on Mac OS X Lion and it works. Only some window titles have been changed. The procedure though, is exactly the same.

Setting up Your Macintosh OS X Computer

Connect your printer to your Mac and print a test page to ensure that it works properly. If all is well, hop on over to ’System Preferences’ and click "Print & Scan" (in older versions of OS X, it was called ’Print and Fax’).

Select your printer and check ’Share this printer on the network’. Next, click ’Sharing Preferences’.

From the Sharing pane, turn ’Printer Sharing’ on by checking the corresponding box on the left. Check the box next to your printer. Under Users, click the drop-down menu next to Everyone and choose ’Can Print’.

Note: Normally, you would be able to pick and choose which users have access to your printer by requiring them to enter a username and password. However, this feature is not currently available for users accessing the printer from Windows 7 machines. Everyone must be set to ’Can Print’, otherwise you cannot print to a shared Macintosh printer from Windows 7.

Now, you’re all set with your Mac. Let’s move over to the Windows 7 machine.

Adding an OS X Shared Printer to a Windows 7 Computer

Download Bonjour Print Services for Windows from the Apple Support website. As of this writing, the current version is Bonjour 2.0.2, which supports Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later. Installation is straightforward: run the setup file, agree to the terms (read them, if you’d like) and keep clicking Next until it’s finished.

Now, run the ’Bonjour Printer Wizard’. Make sure your Mac machine is up and running, connected to the network and the printer is connected and turned on. If all is well, Bonjour will automatically detect the shared printers. They’ll be listed as ’PRINTER NAME @ COMPUTER NAME’. Choose the printer you’d like to install and click Next.

If prompted, install the printer drivers. If you have the printer drivers installed on your computer already, you can choose them from the list. If not, you’ll have to locate them manually by clicking ’Have Disk’. Make sure that you install the proper drivers for your specific printer model, otherwise you may have limited or no printer function.

After choosing the drivers, you’ll have an opportunity to verify the settings before finishing the printer setup. Click Finish if all looks good.

Now, the OS X shared printer will be available in the ’Printers and Faxes’ panel of Windows 7.

To print from it, simply choose it from the Print dialog from any program.

Conclusion

Printing to a shared Macintosh printer is fairly hassle-free with Bonjour. You may have difficulties if your firewall blocks port 5353 by manually configuring your firewall. See How to Manage Windows Firewall Communication Rules for more information. Also, check out some of these related articles for more tips on sharing files and printers.

Related articles:

Access Windows 7 Shared Folders from OS X on a Home Network
How to Share OS X Folders with Windows 7
Printing to a Windows 7 Shared Printer from Macintosh OS X