Printing using VB.NET

[mike2013]

i have an application that am adding a print option in the menu strip. i want the application to be able to print everything on the form when i hit print. right now it only prints whats displayed on the screen but i want to print everything thats displayed. Here is the code i have have. it only allows me to print whats displayed and scroll down to print more. any help on how to print everything on the form is much appreciated.

 Private Sub PrintPageToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles PrintPageToolStripMenuItem.Click
     

        Dim settings As New System.Drawing.Printing.PrinterSettings
        PrintForm1.PrinterSettings = settings
        settings.DefaultPageSettings.Landscape = True

        PrintForm1.PrintAction = Printing.PrintAction.PrintToPreview

        PrintForm1.Print(Me, PowerPacks.Printing.PrintForm.PrintOption.Scrollable)
end sub

[dday9]

PrintForm can be handy, but generally doesn't pan out. But what you're wanting it to do can be done with PrintForm. In the .Print you set the Form and the PrintOption correctly, the only thing that I can assume is that you have the form's AutoScroll property set to False. Change it to True and see if that works for you.

[mike2013]

Thank you for the reply dday9 i did have the form auto scroll on false however that still didn't fix my problem.

[dday9]

Hmm, how is it not displaying correctly? Is it not showing controls that you expect to be there or is it still only showing the visible portion of the screen? The reason I ask is because look at the differences:

1)

    Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        'Without AutoScroll enabled
        PrintForm1.PrintAction = Printing.PrintAction.PrintToPreview

        PrintForm1.Print(Me, PowerPacks.Printing.PrintForm.PrintOption.Scrollable)
    End Sub

2)

    Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        'With AutoScroll enabled
        Me.AutoScroll = True

        PrintForm1.PrintAction = Printing.PrintAction.PrintToPreview

        PrintForm1.Print(Me, PowerPacks.Printing.PrintForm.PrintOption.Scrollable)
    End Sub

You can see that in the second photo, the label at the bottom is now appearing once AutoScroll is enabled.

[mike2013]

i see how yours works but i did the exact same thing and it still prints whats displayed and never scrolls down to print the rest.

 Private Sub PrintPageToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles PrintPageToolStripMenuItem.Click
     
        Dim settings As New System.Drawing.Printing.PrinterSettings
        Me.AutoScroll = True
        PrintForm1.PrinterSettings = settings
        settings.DefaultPageSettings.Landscape = True

        PrintForm1.PrintAction = Printing.PrintAction.PrintToPreview

        PrintForm1.Print(Me, PowerPacks.Printing.PrintForm.PrintOption.Scrollable)

    End Sub

[mike2013]

It still prints off the visible portion of the screen and that's it.

[mike2013]

if it helps here is a picture of what im trying to print.

[dday9]

Are you using the automatic scrollbars to scroll through the form, or are you using a v_scroll bar to scroll down?

[mike2013]

I believe its automatic. I also read some stuff on printform1 and everything i read was saying that it only prints whats displayed on screen and the best way to do what i want to do is by print document. Do you have an idea how to do that?

[dday9]

PrintDocument is much more difficult to use than PrintForm, however it gives you so much more control on what you're printing. The place that I'll direct you to is Merrion's printing guide, ---> here <---. It's everything you need to know and more on how to print in Visual Basic.Net.

[dunfiddlin]

Let's at least get the PrintForm confusion out of the way. It's not that it's only showing the visible area at all. The paper simply isn't big enough to get any more of the form into. PrintForm merely reproduces the form actual size. If it runs off the edge of the paper then that bit's simply lost. You'd get more in by reducing margins and using the whole printable area but that still might not be enough.

[mike2013]

do you guys have any ideas on how to get the whole form to print and it can be on more than 1 page as long as everything on the form prints.

[dday9]

Mike, I take it that you didn't go through that thread that I provided in post #10. Even in the PrintDocument documentation, it gives an example on how to handle multiple pages.

[mike2013]

I did read it and i also played around with it all day yesterday and also found this other code that im trying to change according to what i have and i still cant figure it out. In this code they are trying to print text from a textbox and not graphics. Here is the code.

 Private Sub PrintPageToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles PrintPageToolStripMenuItem.Click
        Me.AutoScroll = True
        StringToPrint = Textbox.Text
        PrintDocument1.Print()
    End Sub

    Private Sub PrintForm1_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles PrintDocument1.PrintPage
        Dim numChars As Integer
        Dim numLines As Integer
        Dim stringForPage As String
        Dim strFormat As New StringFormat()
        Dim PrintFont As Font
        PrintFont = Textbox.Font
        Dim rectDraw As New RectangleF(e.MarginBounds.Left, e.MarginBounds.Top, e.MarginBounds.Width, e.MarginBounds.Height)
        Dim sizeMeasure As New SizeF(e.MarginBounds.Width, e.MarginBounds.Height - PrintFont.GetHeight(e.Graphics))
        strFormat.Trimming = StringTrimming.Word
        e.Graphics.MeasureString(StringToPrint, PrintFont, sizeMeasure, strFormat, numChars, numLines)
        stringForPage = StringToPrint.Substring(0, numChars)
        e.Graphics.DrawString(stringForPage, PrintFont, Brushes.Black, rectDraw, strFormat)
        If numChars < StringToPrint.Length Then
            StringToPrint = StringToPrint.Substring(numChars)
            e.HasMorePages = True
        Else
            e.HasMorePages = False
        End If
    End Sub

[mike2013]

Private Sub PrintForm1_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles PrintDocument1.PrintPage

that PrintForm1 should be PrintDocument1

[Saint Neaj]

Private Sub PrintForm1_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles PrintDocument1.PrintPage

that PrintForm1 should be PrintDocument1

Were you able to solved it?. I also have similar issues by printing scrollable panel containing listview. Help me if your worked