PRB: Can't Print a Plain, Unformatted Report to a File

Last reviewed: August 19, 1997
Article ID: Q139144
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft FoxPro for Macintosh, versions 2.5x, 2.6a
  • Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Macintosh, version 3.0b

SYMPTOMS

You are unable to print a plain, unformatted report to a file. The only option appears to be a PostScript-formatted file.

CAUSE

There is no generic text printer driver in the Macintosh operating system, so FoxPro for Macintosh is unable to create a text-only report through a report layout.

WORKAROUND

You can use one of the following workarounds:

  • Use the TEXT ... END TEXT commands.
  • Code the reports manually.
  • Obtain the third-party program PRINT2PICT. PRINT2PICT is a shareware printer driver extension published by a vendor independent of Microsoft. It previews and saves printed pages to a PICT file format. This extension requires System 7 or later and has online Help available. Support for this product is provided by its author, not by Microsoft. Any issues resulting from the use of this product should be referred to the author of PRINT2PICT. For more information on this utility, you can reach the author, Baudouin Raoult, at the following address:

    17 Home Farm Close RG2 7TD Reading Berkshire England E-mail: mab@ecmwf.co.uk

    This information about PRINT2PICT was taken from the documentation provided by B. Raoult and is not warranted or guaranteed by Microsoft in any capacity.

Although it doesn't make use of a report, another workaround is to use a SQL SELECT statement to create a text file from a data source. For example, you could use the following statement to place data from the Customer table into a text file named Test.txt:

   SELECT * FROM customer NOCONSOLE TO FILE test.txt

STATUS

Microsoft is researching this behavior and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.


Additional query words: ASCII mac layout print
Keywords : FoxMac FxprintGeneral VFoxMac kb3rdparty kbprint
Version : MACINTOSH:2.50b,2.50c,2.60a,3.00b
Platform : MACINTOSH
Issue type : kbprb


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Last reviewed: August 19, 1997
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