Creating PDF files

[John Baker]

I would like to be able to create a PDF file using code.
I want to turn a report into a PDF file.
Could anyone tell me how to do this or perhaps have some code to share.

Any help greatly appreciated.

John Baker
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Jon Ley]

John,

The easiest way I have found of being able to do this (after much searching)
is to get the 'PDF and Mail Class Library' from ACGSoft
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/attac-cg/ACGSoft.htm).
Unfortunately, you also have to buy the full version of Adobe Acrobat for
each computer that you want to be able to run this from.

I would be interested to hear if anyone has any cheaper/easier options. Our
latest issue is that the ACGSoft product is very specific in terms of the
versions of Access and Acrobat that you're using. We recently set up some
new users with this facility, only to discover that our version of the
library wouldn't work with the new version of Acrobat (version 6). We've
ended up downgrading the new users to Acrobat version 5 for consistency.

Jon Ley.

 

[User]

eDocPrinter from http://www.iteksoft.com works very well printing a report
(or any other Windows document) to a PDF file.
But I don't know how/if the printing can be scripted from code.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

Here is one great pdf maker/printer driver.

It is absolutely Free,

And free means no watermarks, no nag screens, no annoying Popup
advertisements, no time limits etc.

It is also very fast, and works very well. I highly recommend it.

http://www.acrosoftware.com/products/cutepdf/Printer.asp

The only problem with the above example is that you can't automate the file
name.

However, I have not tried, but apprently the following open souce example is
also quite good:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

 

[Jon Ley]

This is GREAT! I've just downloaded the trial version, and for $29 per user
it's absolutely brilliant. In terms of coding it from Access, I think the
way to do it would be to define your reports to print to this specific
printer driver. You then just need to

DoCmd.OpenReport "MyReport", , , strWhereCondition

(strWhereCondition allows you to specify additional report criteria at run
time, e.g. "ClientID = " & lngClientID). There are settings that you can
change within the printer driver preferences so that it does not prompt for
a file name or location (you set a fixed location, and the file name
defaults to the name of the report that you're opening). If necessary, your
code can subsequently move or rename the file. You can also set document
security, watermarks and bookmarks and the report can even be automatically
emailed. Best of all, you can embed commands within the report to override
default settings. This is a much better option for us than our current
solution (the ACGSoft PDF and Mail library) - it doesn't depend on your
version of Access, and you don't need to purchase full Acrobat writer on
top.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Jon.