Controlling Printing and Printer Setup on the Viewer

The viewer control has a Printer property that you can use to set up the printer or call the print method for some pages in the Pages collection.

Note: Paper size and page orientation are not reflected in the report until you restart it since the report has been rendered to the original print specification.

You can create a global printer object and use it for all reports included in your application. Before starting each report you can set the printer property of the report to the global printer object.

Using the same preview form, implement printer setup and print menu options. Add the following code to your form:

1. Continuing with the project started above, add the following code to the Form_Load event:

   Private Sub Form_Load()
   	addButtonsToARV
   	' This overrides the print tool
   	For cnt = 0 To arv.ToolBar.Tools.Count - 1
   		If "&Print..." = arv.ToolBar.Tools(cnt).Caption Then
   			arv.ToolBar.Tools(cnt).ID = CONST_PRINTTOOLID
   		End If
   	Next cnt
   End Sub

2. Modify the arv_ToolbarClick event to handle the printer click event:

   Private Sub arv_ToolbarClick(ByVal Tool As DDActiveReportsViewer2Ctl.DDTool)
   	Dim bReturn As Boolean
    
   	Select Case Tool.Caption
   		Case Is = "O&pen"
   			'call the open sub
   			tbOpen
   		Case Is = "&Close"
   			'call the exit sub
   			tbExit
   		Case Is = "&PDF"
   			'call the PDFExport sub
   			tbPDFExport
   		Case Is = "&Save"
   			'call the Save sub
   			tbSave
   		Case Is = "&Print..."
   			arv.UseSourcePrinter = True
   			arv.Printer.SetupDialog
   			bReturn = arv.Printer.PrintDialog(Me.hWnd)
   			If bReturn Then
   				arv.PrintReport False
   				CancelledJob = False
   			Else
   				CancelledJob = True
   			End If
   	End Select
   End Sub

3. Modify the Open sub to enable the printer button:

   Private Sub tbOpen()
   	cmndlg.Filter = "Report Document File (*.rdf)|*.rdf"
   	cmndlg.ShowOpen
   	If cmndlg.FileName <> "" Then
   		If Not arv.ReportSource Is Nothing Then
   			Set arv.ReportSource = Nothing
   		End If
   		arv.Pages.Load cmndlg.FileName
   		'Enables buttons when a report is loaded
   		arv.ToolBar.Tools.Item(5).Enabled = True
   		arv.ToolBar.Tools.Item(arv.ToolBar.Tools.Count - 1).Enabled = True
   		'Enable print button
   		arv.ToolBar.Tools.Item(7).Enabled = True
   	End If
   End Sub