After printing

Each folder decides what becomes of a file once Printy is finished with it. The setting is Nach dem Druck.

The three rules

In Unterordner verschieben

The default, and the one to start with.

• A printed file moves into a printed subfolder of the watched folder.
• A file that failed for good moves into failed.

The watched folder stays empty, which makes “has this been dealt with?” answerable at a glance, and the two outcomes never get mixed up. Neither subfolder is ever scanned, so nothing there is printed a second time.

Liegen lassen

The file stays exactly where it is. Printy records that it has handled it, so it is not printed again.

Use this when something else owns the folder — an archive another system writes to and expects to stay intact.

The folder fills up over time, and Printy’s record of what it has seen is what keeps it from reprinting. That record lives in Printy’s database: resetting it would make everything in the folder look new again.

Löschen

The file is deleted after it has been printed.

Caution

Only choose this when the file exists somewhere else too. A deleted file is gone — Printy has no undo and does not move it to the recycle bin.

Files that failed are never deleted

This is worth stating on its own, because it is the one place the rules do not apply symmetrically.

A job that failed for good — three attempts, all unsuccessful — is treated as follows:

Rule	What happens to a failed file
In Unterordner verschieben	Moved to failed.
Liegen lassen	Stays where it is.
Löschen	Stays where it is. It is not deleted.

A file that could not be printed is the one file you certainly still need. Deleting it because the rule said “delete” would destroy the only copy of a document precisely when something has already gone wrong.

When a file of the same name already exists

Moving never overwrites. If rechnung.pdf is already in printed, the incoming one is stored as rechnung-<timestamp>.pdf, with a counter appended if even that is taken.

Scanners that number from 1 and restart produce this constantly, and an overwrite would silently destroy the earlier document.

Cleaning up

Printy never empties printed or failed — that is your decision, and a folder that quietly deletes records of what it printed would be worse than one that grows.

Both are ordinary folders. Delete from them, archive them, or point a cleanup script at them; Printy does not mind and does not look inside.