Access Cookbook, 2nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Recipe 5.5 Programmatically Control the Paper Source

5.5.1 Problem

You'd like to be
able to print the first page of your reports from a paper tray
containing letterhead paper and then print the rest on normal paper
stock. Is there some way in Access to switch paper trays
programmatically from within your application?

5.5.2 Solution

The paper source is one of the properties
of the Printer object associated with a report (see the Solution in
Recipe 5.4 for a description of the Printer
object) that you can programmatically control. Given the information
in the Solution in Recipe 5.4,
it's relatively easy to change the paper source for
a report so that the first page prints from one paper bin and the
rest prints from another.

Load and run frmPaperSource in

05-05.MDB (Figure 5-5).

Figure 5-5. frmPaperSource allows you to print from different paper sources

1. With frmPaperSource loaded, choose a report. The report will load,
   minimized, in preview mode.

2. Choose a paper bin for the first page and a bin for the rest of the
   pages. Note that the lists of paper bins contain all the possible
   paper sources; your printer may not support all of the options listed
   in the combo boxes. You'll need to find the bins
   that work correctly with your printer driver.

3. Click the Print button. Access should print the first page of the
   report from the bin chosen for the first page and the rest from the
   bin chosen for the other pages.

To use this technique in your own applications,
you'll need to add code that supports printing the
first page, then the rest of the pages, as the result of some action
(such as clicking a command button). In reaction to this event, call
the

PrintPages procedure, shown here:

Private Sub PrintPages(strReport As String, _
FirstPagePaperBin As AcPrintPaperBin, _
AllPagesPaperBin As AcPrintPaperBin)
Dim rpt As Report
On Error GoTo HandleErrors
DoCmd.OpenReport strReport, acViewPreview, WindowMode:=acIcon
Set rpt = Reports(strReport)
rpt.Printer.PaperBin = FirstPagePaperBin
' Unfortunately, you have to select the report in order to print it.
' Who wrote the PrintOut method this way, anyway?
DoCmd.SelectObject acReport, strReport
DoCmd.PrintOut acPages, 1, 1
' Define the paper source.
rpt.Printer.PaperBin = AllPagesPaperBin
' Print all the rest of the pages (up to 32000).
DoCmd.PrintOut acPages, 2, 32000
ExitHere:
DoCmd.Close acReport, strReport, acSaveNo
Exit Sub
HandleErrors:
MsgBox "Error: " & Err.Description & " (" & Err.Number & ")"
Resume ExitHere
End Sub

In the sample form, this code is called from the Click event of the
Print button, like this:

Private Sub cmdPrint_Click( )
Call PrintPages(Me.cboReportList, Me.cboFirstPage, Me.cboAllOther)
End Sub

5.5.3 Discussion

As you saw in the Solution in Recipe 5.4,
you can use a form or report's Printer property to
change its paper source. Printing one page of a report from one bin
and the rest from another is easy. First, open the report in preview
mode and get a reference to the open report:

DoCmd.OpenReport strReport, acViewPreview, WindowMode:=acIcon
Set rpt = Reports(strReport)

Then set the PaperBin property of the
report's Printer object, select the report, and
print the first page, like this:

rpt.Printer.PaperBin = FirstPagePaperBin
DoCmd.SelectObject acReport, strReport
DoCmd.PrintOut acPages, 1, 1

Set the PaperBin property for the rest of the pages, and print them
(the report is already selected, so you don't need
to select it again):

rpt.Printer.PaperBin = AllPagesPaperBin
' Print all the rest of the pages (up to 32000).
DoCmd.PrintOut acPages, 2, 32000

The PrintOut
method's implementation is somewhat unfortunate.
It's the only way you can control the specific pages
you want printed, yet it requires you to select the object to be
printed before printing it. This combination of requirements means
that you must first open the report in preview or design view and set
its properties, then select and print it. You cannot select a hidden
report (Access will unhide it before selecting it), so your best bet
is to open it with the WindowMode
parameter of the DoCmd.OpenReport method set to
acIcon. That way, the report is minimized. If this
behavior truly bothers you, you can use Application.Echo to turn off
screen display before you open the report and then turn it back on
when you're done. In addition, if you specify the
first page to be printed, you must also specify the last page.
Therefore, even if you don't know how many pages
your report contains, you must specify an upper bound (32,000, in our
example) when you print. Hopefully, your report
won't contain more than 32,000 pages. If it does,
bump up that number.

If you're going to provide this functionality in an
application to be distributed to users who have printers on which it
hasn't been tested, you'll need to
make it clear that some of the bins listed in the combo boxes may not
work with their printers. It may require some experimentation on
their part to determine which settings are correct.