Print Multiple Documents With Different Print Settings

[walkingdead]

Hi All,

I have a bit of a tricky situation on my hands and I need some advice.

The problem is kind of tricky (at least it seems to be to me) so I'll give you an example of what I am trying to do.

I have a list of 20 recipients and 3 document types for each recipient that needs to be printed but the 3 documents have different print properties ie I need 2 copies of one document (1 for signature to be returned and another for the recipients records) and single copies of the remaining 2 documents.

In order to allow the change to the print settings I am allowing the user to set the print settings per document type. Once the user hits print and the script kicks in it first asks the user for the # of copies desired for that document type in a custom dialog box which gets set to a variable (so I can loop through the print dialog for x copies with out having to ask for each record)and repeat for each document type. This way I get 20 copies of document A then 20 of B and 20 of C in there own nice neat little piles. This works great except for the fact that anytime the printer gets changed the change is ignored and the default printer is ignored.

Is there anyway I can force FM to accept the change the user has made to the printer settings or am I just going to have to live with it until FM decides to fix it next century?

Thanks In Advance For The Advice,

Chris

[mikegfy]

This sounds like a similar problem to what I'm having. I can get the printer to change for me by running a batch file that changes the default printer for filemaker in the registry. However, the page size doesn't always change. I'm trying to figure out how to make the page size stick in the print setup or print script step.

[Agnes Riley]

There are plug-ins out there to help you with printer selection:

1. http://www.productivecomputing.com/plugins/change-printer-id-79/.
   
2. http://filemaker-plugins.com/change-printer/
   

There might be others, too.

[Real]

I have a client that normally prints to a HP laserjet printer. There are times when he prints to a Dymo lable printer. To do this he uses a script I created and it works fine. However once he has done this, Filemaker defaults to the Dymo Printer. The user has to go to page setup to return to the HP laserjet Printer. Is there a way to tell Filemaker to return to the previous printer ??. I tested the Change Printer plug in from Productive computing and i did not see a clean way to do it without prinitng a sheet to the previous printer.

[Rick Whitelaw]

Set up a Preferences table that assigns a given printer to a given task (General, Cheques, Labels, Colour etc.). Then script the print routines via Calculated AppleScript if on a Mac, and I suspect VB scripting on a pc. There's no easy way around this if you want your solution to print to multiple printers. It's a lot of work. FileMaker has a long way to go before this issue is solved.