XL5: Finding Default Printer and Port Settings

• Microsoft Excel for Windows, version 5.0

SUMMARY

Microsoft Excel version 5.0, does not have the built-in functionality to directly recognize default printer and port settings. To return this printer information, use the Microsoft Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) to read the DEVICE line of the [WINDOWS] section of the WIN.INI file.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides examples of Visual Basic procedures for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This Visual Basic procedure is provided 'as is' and Microsoft does not guarantee that it can be used in all situations. Microsoft does not support modifications of this procedure to suit customer requirements for a particular purpose. Note that a line that is preceded by an apostrophe introduces a comment in the code--comments are provided to explain what the code is doing at a particular point in the procedure. Note also that an underscore character (_) indicates that code continues from one line to the next. You can type lines that contain this character as one logical line or you can divide the lines of code and include the line continuation character. For more information about Visual Basic for Applications programming style, see the "Programming Style in This Manual" section in the "Document Conventions" section of the "Visual Basic User's Guide."

The following macro will return the default printer type and port.

'Enter the following Declare Function as a single line

Declare Function GetProfileString Lib "KERNEL" (ByVal lpAppName As
String,_
 ByVal lpKeyName As String, ByVal lpDefault As String,_
 ByVal lpReturnedString As String, ByVal nSize As Integer) As Integer

Sub Default_Printer_Port()

Dim Result As String * 255
Dim Printer As String
Dim Port As String

   'Gets info from win.ini

    Call GetProfileString("Windows","Device","",result,254)

   'Gets first part of device line

    Printer = Left(result,InStr(result, ",")-1)

   'Gets last part of device line

    Port = Mid(result, InStr(InStr(result, ",") +1, result, ",") +1)

   'Displays Printer and port in successive message boxes

    MsgBox "The current default printer is " & Printer
    MsgBox "The current default port is " & Port

End Sub 

Additional query words: call register

Keywords :
Version : 5.00
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type :