Prevent Unnecessary Printing of Docs with WWF

wwfThe signature of your email reads - “Please consider the environment before printing this email” - but some of your colleagues don’t seem to care. What do you do next to discourage them from printing email attachments and other useless stuff?

WWF, the organization that is focused on the conservation of our environment and wild-life, have come up with a unique idea to prevent such “casual” users from sending print commands.

They have created a new file format called WWF that is exactly like PDF except for the print functionality. That is, a document saved as WWF can be read inside any PDF reader but the person won’t be able to print it.

wwf software

To get started, install the WWF Software and then use “Save as .WWF” while saving your documents, emails, web pages, etc. The software is currently available for Mac only though the Windows version is expected to become available soon.

Technically, the WWF format is just another PDF file but one that cannot be printed out. If you have a PDF writer installed on your machine already, you may check the “disable printing” option while creating PDFs and it will also have a similar effect.

Also see: Ways to Reduce Printing Costs

Thanks Myrtille.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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