Dot Matrix Printing

[Guest]

I have been asked to develop a report for a client using a dot-matrix printer. I am having an enormous amount of trouble lining up the fields within the form. Any suggestions?

 

[Mike Painter]

I have been asked to develop a report for a client using a dot-matrix

printer. I am having an enormous amount of trouble lining up the fields
within the form. Any suggestions?

Buy him a laser or ink jet and show him the cost per page is less and the
results are faster.
OR
Tell him that his bank does not use carbon copies any more, why does he?
OR
Since "They" usually don't listen. Scream.

You will need the control codes for the printer.
You may have to send some codes to the printer before each print job.

If you are trying to match fields to a preprinted form you may have to hand
code the whole thing.
There does not seem to be a way to send control codes that adjust line
spacing in an Access report.
If some of the blocks are almost on the same line the problem is much worse.

The end of page the computer sends may interfere with the end of page the
printer sends and pages will creep. This is a matter of turning off the end
of page at the printer or sending control codes.
Sometimes you just have to fiddle.

 

[Tony Toews]

I have been asked to develop a report for a client using a dot-matrix printer. I am having an enormous amount of trouble lining up the fields within the form. Any suggestions?

So there is a preprinted form to which you are trying to line up the
printing? That can be difficult.

For starters try using a font built into the printer. You will need
to install the printer driver on your system. These will typically be
Courier and will not be True Type fonts. There may be others. You
can tell a non TT font by the non TT symbol on the toolbar when
choosing a font when in design view and selecting a field on the
report.

The printer speed will almost certainly be much faster. It'll look
much uglier but it could be as much as five or ten times faster so
that's a tradeoff the client has to make.

If the paper size is non standard, IOW not letter or A4 size, then you
will need to setup custom paper sizes. If in Win NT4.0, Win 2000, Win
XP, or Win Server 2003 it's totally different than Win 95, 98 or ME.
And very non intuitive.

Go into the list of Printers under the Settings button from the Start
menu. You may need to do this on the print server. Then click on
File >> Server Properties Then you can create a new form with the
sizes you want on it as well as a name.

Then you can follow the below steps inside Access to choose the just
created Paper Size. Go into the design of the report, Click
'File',Page Setup', Click the 'Page' tab., Select 'Specific Printer',,
Pick the printer you are using., Click 'Properties' then the 'Paper'
tab., In 'Paper Size' select 'Custom'. and choose your just created
Paper Size.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

 

[RK]

Well, all forms are designed with the printer that is
installed as the default printer. In order for you to
create this report correctly. Keep in mind that if they
change printers, the form will have to be redone for that
printer. There are some generic printers I use for doing
this. i.e. Dot Matrix, epson ecp/2 (same as IBM Pro),
okidata 184/192, for Laserjet I use HP2 and hp4 and for
Inject I use Canon Bubble jet 200 and HP designjet 600
These 6 forms will then print on most printers correctly.


RK

 

[MyndPhlyp]

I have been asked to develop a report for a client using a dot-matrix

printer. I am having an enormous amount of trouble lining up the fields
within the form. Any suggestions?

* Use monospaced fonts (i.e., Courier New)
* Use 10 characters per inch (12 pt)
* In your report layout, make all field widths a multiple of 0.1" wide and
position on 0.1" increments
* An 11" page contains 66 lines. Set your lines at multiples of 0.1666..."
high and increments
* Maximum usable horizontal character spaces per line = 80
* Maximum usable vertical line spaces per 11" page = 60 (3 lines at top and
bottom for perforation skip)

The rest of the fine tuning happens at the printer by adjusting the
tractor's horizontal position and setting the top of the page.