Generally, the Print dialog's self-contained preview window is sufficient for quickly checking the printing parameters. For more accurate previewing, you can open the resizable Preview window. This lets you check more thoroughly how the printed output will appear and is useful for checking fine detail, or when checking the effect of a pen table on the print.

When you open the Print dialog, the thumbnail preview paints for 10 seconds before stopping to allow the rest of the dialog to refresh. If the print preview is not complete within that time period, a message appears in the status bar. The default time period is 10 seconds. It is controlled by the Thumbnail preview timeout setting in the Print Preferences dialog. This setting is stored in your user preference file. You can use the MS_PLTDLG_THUMBNAIL_PREVIEW_TIMEOUT configuration variable to override this setting.

As you make changes to the printing parameters, or the design, you can use the Print dialog's Update from View and Preview icons to update the display. This can be a useful tool when you are creating a pen table, for example. You can view the results of the changes to the pen table resymbolization prior to printing.