I'm working on a medical billing database that needs to send info to an electronic billing service.

The billing service takes a specifically formated billing form (HCFA 1500) and expected you to lay the information on the page as if it were going to be printed on this paper form. Then, they want you to save what you would have printed as a *.txt file and then they download it to their service.

I thought I could get the layout all set up and then Print, but to a file. I can't figure it out, there's no selection to print to file and save it as a .txt. format, the only choice is the *.prn format. Any ideas?

Edited - I didn't realize taht a few post below, the same question asked. I hope we can fid a solution to this problem. thanks again.

[ March 25, 2001: Message edited by: BruceJ ]

That seems like a rather strange format requirement considering that the output will depend on the type of printer that the billing service uses. If they are using old lineprinter style formatting, (monospaced, 10 char/inch horizontal and 6 char/inch vertical), then you can set up the a calculated text field that assembles all necessary fields with spaces and carriage returns as necessary. Then, rather than print, you simply export to a text file.

You should check with them to see if they can use a csv (comma delimited) text file. In this case too, you export rather than print. This is easier to set up, because you just select the field export order according to their requirements.