Microsoft KB Archive/248882

Knowledge Base

How To Print a Range of Pages with the CommonDialog Control

Article ID: 248882

Article Last Modified on 7/1/2004

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APPLIES TO

• Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 32-Bit Enterprise Edition

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This article was previously published under Q248882

SUMMARY

The Print Dialog of the Common Dialog control has three print range options that can be selected:

• A selection of text.
• A range of pages.
• All pages.

Depending upon the option selected, certain flags are set that can be checked programmatically to determine which option has been chosen in the printer dialog box. This article shows how to print a set of pages populated with records from a database. The idea can be extended to other types of text. To do so it is necessary to determine the margins and printable area of the page, as described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

193943 How To Use GetDeviceCaps to Determine Margins on a Page

MORE INFORMATION

By default the Pages From ... To option is dimmed in the dialog box. To enable this option you must set the Max property. This is so that the range entered by the user can be validated.

In this article a set of three pages is created from the records of the Nwind.mdb database that ships with Visual Basic. Each record is considered to be one line on the page. Since the number of lines depends on the fontsize, the sample sets a specific fontsize and determines how many lines will fit on the page. This is necessary in order to inform the printer when to start a new page.

Step-By-Step Example

1. Start a new Visual Basic Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.
2. From the Project menu, select Components. Select the Microsoft Common Dialog Control and then click OK.
3. From the Project menu, select References. Select the Microsoft DAO 3.51 Object Library and then click OK.
4. Add a text box, a CommonDialog and two command button controls to Form1.
5. In the Properties dialog box for Text1 set the MultiLine property to True and the ScrollBars property to 3-Both.

6. Add the following code to the General Declarations section of Form1:

   Option Explicit
   
   Private Sub Command1_Click()
      Dim myDatabase As Database
      Dim rsMyTable As Recordset
      Dim i As Integer
      Dim j As Integer
      Dim startpage As Integer
   
   ' enable the page range selection option
      CommonDialog1.Max = 3
   
   ' set the last page to be printed
      CommonDialog1.FromPage = 1
      CommonDialog1.ToPage = 3
   
   ' clear flags before showing printer dialog box
      CommonDialog1.Flags = 0
   
   ' show the printer dialog box
      CommonDialog1.ShowPrinter
   
   ' Enter the page number from which to start printing
      startpage = CommonDialog1.FromPage
   
   ' set the font size. This will give 42 lines per page
      Printer.FontSize = 18
   
   ' replace with your path to the nwind.mdb
      Set myDatabase = OpenDatabase("nwind.mdb")
   
      Set rsMyTable = myDatabase.OpenRecordset("Customers")
   
      rsMyTable.MoveFirst
   
      If (CommonDialog1.Flags And cdlPDPageNums) <> 0 Then
         MsgBox " Printing pages " & CommonDialog1.FromPage & " to " & _
                CommonDialog1.ToPage
         Select Case startpage
          Case 1
   
          Case 2
       ' skip page 1
            For i = 1 To 42
               rsMyTable.MoveNext
            Next
   
          Case 3
       ' skip 2 pages
            For i = 1 To 84
               rsMyTable.MoveNext
            Next
         End Select
   
         If startpage <> 0 Then
            For j = startpage To CommonDialog1.ToPage
               For i = 1 To 42
                  If rsMyTable.EOF Then Exit For
                  Text1.Text = Text1.Text & rsMyTable!CompanyName & vbCrLf
                  Printer.Print rsMyTable!CompanyName
                  rsMyTable.MoveNext
               Next
               Printer.NewPage
            Next
            Printer.EndDoc
         End If
   
      ElseIf (CommonDialog1.Flags And cdlPDSelection) <> 0 Then
      
         rsMyTable.MoveLast
         rsMyTable.MoveFirst
         For i = 1 To rsMyTable.RecordCount
            Text1.Text = Text1.Text & rsMyTable!CompanyName & vbCrLf
            rsMyTable.MoveNext
         Next
         MsgBox "Select text to be printed"
      Else
         For i = 1 To rsMyTable.RecordCount
            Text1.Text = Text1.Text & rsMyTable!CompanyName & vbCrLf
            rsMyTable.MoveNext
         Next
         Printer.Print Text1.Text
         Printer.EndDoc
         MsgBox "Printing all pages"
      End If
   End Sub
   
   Private Sub Command2_Click()
      Printer.Print Text1.SelText
      Printer.EndDoc
   End Sub
   
   Private Sub Form_Load()
      Command1.Caption = "Select Printing Option"
      Command2.Caption = "Print selected text"
   End Sub
                       

7. Run the project and test the various options.

REFERENCES

For additional information on determining the margins and printable area of a page, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

193943 How To Use GetDeviceCaps to Determine Margins on a Page

Keywords: kbhowto kbprint kbcmndlgprint kbctrl KB248882

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