I give up! I thought the printer selection problem was resolved in V8?

I have a single-record 'report' consisting of about 10 different layouts (all portrait A4) and then an optional envelope.

Needless to say, I do not want the user to cop 10 Print wndows, so I provide one Print[No Dialog not selected] step and then use Print[No Dialogue] for the remaining layouts. No matter what I do, any change to the printer in that first step is not carried forward. All Print[No dialog] steps after the first one print to the printer specified in the script step.

I even tried changing the system default printer. No effect - FMP knows better than anyone where the printout should go and sends it to the printer specified in the script step!

Any suggestions? (Yes, it's V8.03)

(Currently, I have only one printer and use pdfFactory as my alternative printer but this should not matter.)

Just to make sure, have you tried the print setup script step before calling the subscripts?

-Raz

I've dealt with this very same problem (almost to the point of insanity!!). See "printing multiple layouts at once" by dpassovoy about 5 items down in the list of printing issues.

The problem is that selecting a printer from a print dialog does not change the default printer, so the second & third & ... layouts revert back to the default. The problem gets worse if you have multiple databases because each DB has its own default printer.

One option is to force a print set-up prior to printing since it changes the default printer, but only for that DB.

Another is to revert to FM7 and try using the plug-in from Productive Computing (https://www.productive.cc/pci_cart/FMPro?-DB=PCSC_Products.FP5&-Format=catalog.htm&-Lay=CGI&ID_No=24&-Find). But, it does not work on FM8 under XP.

The other possibility is to use the printers.fp7.zip routine mentioned in "Changing printers within a script" by datalink. The problem here is that you need to know what printers you are dealing with in advance.

Let me know if you come up with anything else. I'm still without a solution that works in my environment (FM8, XP, lots of diff sites with different unknown printers). Good luck!

Dennis

Raz, Yes, I do have a Print Setup step. It's always worth asking though!

Dennis, I saw your post but thought it was slightly different from my requirement. There have been dozens of complaints on the Forum about this issue but none since V8. I thought I must be doing something wrong.

My customer will go ballistic if I put a printer-select dialog in front of every page that's printed. My app is distributed to half a dozen (and growing) different installations, all with different configs! No hope of hard-coding printers.

I haven't tried FMP tech support yet but am about to give them a try; not that I expect much.

Thanks anyway.

Edited May 29, 200619 yr by Guest

Don't waste your time with tech support. They were no help for me.

Dennis