Find out if report goes to a specific printer

I have defined a number of reports that need to be printed on specific
printers (because they have particular stationery loaded). What I need to do
now is check that the user has that printer installed on their machine.

I have noticed that when I hover my mouse over a report name (Access 2002),
I get a tooltip telling me where this report will print. Is there any way I
can programatically retrieve this information? (Having got this, I can loop
through the Printers collection to see if it's installed or not).

Jon:

I believe the PrtDevMode property of the report contains this information.
Please see the following reference for more information.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...PrtDevMode.asp

--
David Lloyd
MCSD .NET
http://LemingtonConsulting.com

This response is supplied "as is" without any representations or warranties.


"Jon Ley" wrote in message
...
I have defined a number of reports that need to be printed on specific
printers (because they have particular stationery loaded). What I need to do
now is check that the user has that printer installed on their machine.

I have noticed that when I hover my mouse over a report name (Access 2002),
I get a tooltip telling me where this report will print. Is there any way I
can programatically retrieve this information? (Having got this, I can loop
through the Printers collection to see if it's installed or not).

David,

Looks like a good place to start, however having tried it I have a couple of
issues. Firstly if I examine the DeviceName property I get gibberish back
(lots of question marks and squares). I am not 100% convinced that the
type_DEVMODE definition is correct - the article says it is a 94 byte
structure, but I count 95!

Anyway, even if I can get something useful back from this, the other problem
I have is that I won't be able to open the report in design mode from an MDE.
Anybody have any other ideas?

Jon.

"David Lloyd" wrote:

Jon:

I believe the PrtDevMode property of the report contains this information.
Please see the following reference for more information.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...PrtDevMode.asp

--
David Lloyd
MCSD .NET
http://LemingtonConsulting.com

This response is supplied "as is" without any representations or warranties.


"Jon Ley" wrote in message
...
I have defined a number of reports that need to be printed on specific
printers (because they have particular stationery loaded). What I need to do
now is check that the user has that printer installed on their machine.

I have noticed that when I hover my mouse over a report name (Access 2002),
I get a tooltip telling me where this report will print. Is there any way I
can programatically retrieve this information? (Having got this, I can loop
through the Printers collection to see if it's installed or not).

There is nothing wrong with the PrtDevMode property which exposes a Devmode
structure.

Yes, it is 94 bytes. How could it possibly be an odd number(95) when every
member of the structure is either 2, 4, 16 or 32 bytes in length?

It is not a string that's why you cannot examine it directly. Have you tried
using the MS KB code that is referenced in this thread? If so what problems
are you having implementing this code. I'm sure someone here can help you.
--

HTH
Stephen Lebans
http://www.lebans.com
Access Code, Tips and Tricks
Please respond only to the newsgroups so everyone can benefit.


"Jon Ley" wrote in message
...
David,

Looks like a good place to start, however having tried it I have a couple
of
issues. Firstly if I examine the DeviceName property I get gibberish back
(lots of question marks and squares). I am not 100% convinced that the
type_DEVMODE definition is correct - the article says it is a 94 byte
structure, but I count 95!

Anyway, even if I can get something useful back from this, the other
problem
I have is that I won't be able to open the report in design mode from an
MDE.
Anybody have any other ideas?

Jon.

"David Lloyd" wrote:

Jon:

I believe the PrtDevMode property of the report contains this
information.
Please see the following reference for more information.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...PrtDevMode.asp

--
David Lloyd
MCSD .NET
http://LemingtonConsulting.com

This response is supplied "as is" without any representations or
warranties.


"Jon Ley" wrote in message
...
I have defined a number of reports that need to be printed on specific
printers (because they have particular stationery loaded). What I need to
do
now is check that the user has that printer installed on their machine.

I have noticed that when I hover my mouse over a report name (Access
2002),
I get a tooltip telling me where this report will print. Is there any way
I
can programatically retrieve this information? (Having got this, I can
loop
through the Printers collection to see if it's installed or not).

Stephen,

Thanks for chipping in on this one. Where to start?!

[Aside - OK, so I don't understand the PrtDevMode structure. When I looked
at it, I had in the back of my mind that Integer = 2 bytes and Long = 4
bytes, and I guessed that String * 32 would mean 32 bytes, so adding up all
the elements gave me 112 (17 Integers, 7 Longs and 2 32-byte strings). So I
thought that maybe I'd remembered the Integer and Long incorrectly and maybe
they should be 1 and 2 bytes respectively, which is where I got my count of
95 from. Anyway, I see now that my memory wasn't failing me after all with
the Integers and Longs, so that still leaves me very confused as to where the
94 comes from. Anyway, this is all kind of irrelevant as ...]

I have tried running both the sample procs in the referenced article, and
neither seems to have any effect that I can detect. For example, running
SwitchOrient opens my report in design mode and then allegedly switches the
orientation of the report. However having run this code, if I go to preview
the report, it is still in its original orientation. Similarly, running
CheckCustomPage and setting the custom page size to something very obviously
different (15 long by 5 wide) is not reflected in the print preview. Anyway,
this is also not necessarily a problem as I don't really want to change
anything, I just want to examine the current settings, which leads me to ...

"It's not a string, that's why you cannot examine it directly." So how _do_
I examine it? The whole point of this question is that I want to find the
name of the device that a given report will print to. Anyway, thinking
further about my original request and about how the PrtDevMode suggestion may
help with this ...

I notice, re-reading the PrtDevMode description, that this returns a generic
"HP LaserJet IIISi" as the DeviceName, rather than the specific installed
instance of this device that I see in the tooltip when I hover over the
report (the same name that is listed in my Printers folder, or if I loop
through the Access Printers collection). This is important as I have multiple
printers installed that would give the same PrtDevMode DeviceName, but one of
them has specific stationery loaded. If a report has been set up to go to
this specific printer, I need to check that the user has this printer
installed on their machine.

You also did not address my issue that the sample code depends on first
opening the report in design mode, which I will not be able to do as I would
be running it from an MDE.

Sorry, very long-winded reply to raise loads of further questions, none of
which I really need answering necessarily, if, as I suspect, the PrtDevMode
approach is not going to solve my original question (although feel free to
wax lyrical on how stupid I am for not understanding the intricacies of this
structure - I will quite happily admit that I tend to glaze over a bit when
the Win32 SDK is mentioned!).

My original question remains - how do I programatically retrieve the
information that is displayed in the tooltip when I hover over a report?

"Stephen Lebans" wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the PrtDevMode property which exposes a Devmode
structure.

Yes, it is 94 bytes. How could it possibly be an odd number(95) when every
member of the structure is either 2, 4, 16 or 32 bytes in length?

It is not a string that's why you cannot examine it directly. Have you tried
using the MS KB code that is referenced in this thread? If so what problems
are you having implementing this code. I'm sure someone here can help you.
--

HTH
Stephen Lebans
http://www.lebans.com
Access Code, Tips and Tricks
Please respond only to the newsgroups so everyone can benefit.


"Jon Ley" wrote in message
...
David,

Looks like a good place to start, however having tried it I have a couple
of
issues. Firstly if I examine the DeviceName property I get gibberish back
(lots of question marks and squares). I am not 100% convinced that the
type_DEVMODE definition is correct - the article says it is a 94 byte
structure, but I count 95!

Anyway, even if I can get something useful back from this, the other
problem
I have is that I won't be able to open the report in design mode from an
MDE.
Anybody have any other ideas?

Jon.

"David Lloyd" wrote:

Jon:

I believe the PrtDevMode property of the report contains this
information.
Please see the following reference for more information.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...PrtDevMode.asp

--
David Lloyd
MCSD .NET
http://LemingtonConsulting.com

This response is supplied "as is" without any representations or
warranties.


"Jon Ley" wrote in message
...
I have defined a number of reports that need to be printed on specific
printers (because they have particular stationery loaded). What I need to
do
now is check that the user has that printer installed on their machine.

I have noticed that when I hover my mouse over a report name (Access
2002),
I get a tooltip telling me where this report will print. Is there any way
I
can programatically retrieve this information? (Having got this, I can
loop
through the Printers collection to see if it's installed or not).