Spooling in printing refers to the process of temporarily storing print jobs in the computers memory until the printer is ready to print them. When a user sends a document to the printer, the print spooler software on the computer manages the order of the documents to proceed to the print queue. The spooler allows users to send a document to the printer while another one is printing, and it holds it in the queue until the current job has been printed in full. This means that users dont have to wait for a previous job to finish printing before selecting print. The spooler is necessary because printers dont have as much memory as computers and need an intermediary program to conduct and wave the print jobs to home plate.

The spooler creates an entry in the print queue for each job and directs the output from a users process to a print file. It spools print jobs by emptying the print queue, one job at a time per printer, as the assigned printer becomes available. The spooler also permits users to continue working without waiting for a print job to finish printing.

Various problems involving the spooler can occur with printers after clicking print, such as print jobs getting stuck in the queue, data or documents in the spooler becoming corrupt, and the spooler being unable to translate the data for the printer. To fix these issues, users can try restarting the print spooler service or clearing the print queue.