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MS Access Forum / New Users / December 2007Access 2007 How to Programmatically Retrieve Printer Capabilities
I need to be able to specify a different printer for each report and to have the individual report pick up sheets from a specific tray in an HP LaserJet 4200 or to pick up the default. With the run-time facility's limitations, this is very difficult, even for an experienced programmer. This online help entry (which for some reason I cannot evoke again) refers the user to the PrinterDemo.mdb file. I couldn't find it and I believe that there should be a hyperlink to the correct place. That said, I found PrinterDemo.MDB for Access 10 (2000) and loaded it under A2003. It works, sort of. I had the impression that it would allow me to associate a diffferent printer and options with each report. It appears to reset the options for all reports at the same time and not or even to specify the same printer with different bins depending on the report. Not a terribly useful feature, it seems. I converted the .mdb to A2007's .accdb format and it seems to work similarly to the A2000 version. So, I can use it as a model. Just the same, setting a printer on a report-by-report basis and choosing a particular tray seems far more convoluted than it should be. Helpful advice appreciated! >Just the same, setting a printer on a report-by-report basis and choosing a >particular tray seems far more convoluted than it should be. >Helpful advice appreciated! And unhelpful advice? <smile> It would appear that the PrinterDemo.MDB uses the using the newish Printers collection and Printer objects in Access. The method with the most power, and by far the most complexity, is using the PrtDevMode data structure. ACC: How to Change a Report's Printer Using Code Q129397 For more information about PrtDevMode and PrtDevNames, search for "PrtDevMode property" or "PrtDevNames property," using the Microsoft Access 97 Help Index or Reports: Change printers from code http://www.mvps.org/access/reports/rpt0009.htm For more info on some restrictions, such as not being able to open a report in design mode in MDEs, do a search on prtdevmode at the Knowledge Base at support.microsoft.com. (You might be able to get around this particular problem by using Automation to open a report in an MDB and somehow passing appropriate data to the MDB. This code can also be found in the Developers Handbook. www.developershandbook.com. I'd recommend spending the money on those books even though the last version is A2000. The code in their will save you enough.time and effort to make spending the money very worthwhile. Also note that this is very complex code and is recommended only for advanced programmers. Tony  SignatureTony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can read the entire thread of messages. Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/ > >Just the same, setting a printer on a report-by-report basis and choosing a > >particular tray seems far more convoluted than it should be. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > > Tony I'm beginning to think that a rational approach to managing approximately 100 reports with diverse printer destinations may be to create a small table that's managed by a form that allows a user to assign non-default printers with certain attributes, such as preferred tray for those printers to an individual or even a group of reports. I envision something like a continuous form with the report names and a combo box or two to hold the available printers (including default) and another field for their associated tray numbers. For example, the report name would have a place for HP LJ 4200 and another field for tray #2. This way, the user could set this up once, the table could reside in the back-end of the database and be updateable whenever a user wanted to include a new printer in his "profile." By including the report/printer assignments in a table in the back end, I could update the front-end and not worry about the user's losing the assignments s/he carefully laid out. Thoughts? > >Just the same, setting a printer on a report-by-report basis and choosing a > >particular tray seems far more convoluted than it should be. [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > > Tony >I'm beginning to think that a rational approach to managing approximately 100 >reports with diverse printer destinations may be to create a small table [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > >Thoughts? Makes a lot of sense to me. Tony SignatureTony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can read the entire thread of messages. Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/ |
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