Selecting Printer

[Oldfogey]

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.)

[Razumovsky]

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

-Raz

[dpassovoy]

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

[Oldfogey]

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, 2006 by Guest

[dpassovoy]

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

Dennis