Tip 87: Sending Output to the Printer in Any Order

May 15, 1995

Abstract

You can use the Visual Basic® Print method to send text to the default printer. This article explains how you can send data to the printer in any order (that is, you can print a line of text in the middle of the page and then print some other text at the top of page).

Outputting Data to the Printer

In a Visual Basic® application, you may need to create a hard copy of some data. To send data to the default printer, you use Visual Basic's Print method. For example, to send a line of text to the printer, you would issue a statement such as:

Printer.Print "This is a test"

When this statement is executed, Visual Basic will print the text on the printer. Note that the text is printed at the coordinates specified by the CurrentX and CurrentY properties.

Each time you send data to the printer, Visual Basic automatically updates the CurrentX and CurrentY properties. CurrentX is incremented each time a new character is sent to the printer on the same line. When a new line is needed, the value in CurrentX is reset to zero, and CurrentY is incremented by one to account for the new line.

Therefore, as the example program below shows, you can print to any specific physical location on the paper. You can print a line of text in the center of the paper first and then, by simply changing the CurrentX and CurrentY properties, print a line of text at the top of the page.

Example Program

The example program below prints two lines of text on the default printer. The first line is actually the second line to be physically transferred to the printer.

1. Create a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
   
   
2. Add a Command Button control to Form1. Command1 is created by default.
   
   
3. Add the following code to the Click event for Command1:

   Private Sub Command1_Click()
       Printer.ScaleMode = 2
       Printer.FontSize = 42
       Printer.CurrentX = 40
       Printer.CurrentY = 40
       Printer.Print "This is the first line to be printed"
       
       Printer.CurrentX = 40
       Printer.CurrentY = 12
       Printer.FontSize = 14
       Printer.Print "This is actually the second line to be printed"
       Printer.EndDoc
       
   End Sub
   

Additional References

Knowledge Base Q119673. "How to Print with Rotated Text."

"Managing Your Print Jobs." (MSDN Library, Periodicals, Inside Visual Basic [Cobb])