A method is provided for temporarily disabling printer job language (PJL) commands in a printer device. In a printer device, an electronically formatted print job is accepted with embedded PJL commands. The method parses the print job, and in doing so, differentiates a first PJL command and a PJL disable command. The print job is automatically processed (as is conventional), while temporarily ignoring the first PJL command in response to the PJL disable command. In one aspect, the printer differentiates the first PJL command enveloping the print job, and the PJL disable command enveloping the first PJL command envelope.