PRINT TO FILE - Function Error

[christine]

Hi there

I have an old piece of software which runs okay on my Windows XP Home SP2,
but (I think purposely) will only give me the option of viewing on screen or
printing. I want to save the text-based output as any kind of file on disc.
All right click options seem to be disabled and my mouse will not "click" on
the screen at all, i.e. to cut and paste to a file which I can save. I have
experimented in setting up a Generic/text printer, which still doesn't work
and gives me the message "ATX Function error - no printer support". Is
there any way I can fix this, or alternatively get the "print to file" check
box available on the print dialogue box for this program?

Thanks for any help.

Christine

 

[Lem]

Hi there

I have an old piece of software which runs okay on my Windows XP Home SP2,
but (I think purposely) will only give me the option of viewing on screen or
printing. I want to save the text-based output as any kind of file on disc.
All right click options seem to be disabled and my mouse will not "click" on
the screen at all, i.e. to cut and paste to a file which I can save. I have
experimented in setting up a Generic/text printer, which still doesn't work
and gives me the message "ATX Function error - no printer support". Is
there any way I can fix this, or alternatively get the "print to file" check
box available on the print dialogue box for this program?

Thanks for any help.

Christine

The "Print to file" box is misleading. When this box is checked, the
data stream that normally would go to the print spooler and then to a
specific printer is instead saved. You can use the file later to print
to that same printer, but in general, it's not good for anything else.

You said that you had experimented with setting up a Generic text/only
printer; here's how:

- Open Printers and Faxes and start the "Add a printer" wizard.
- Select "Local printer" and make sure the plug-n-play box is *not* checked
- In the "Use the following port" drop-down, select "FILE: (Print to file)"
- On the Install Printer Software dialog, select "Generic" as the
manufacturer and "Generic/Text only" as the Printer
- Do not make this the default printer, do not share it, and do not
print a test page

When you print from your application, you should see "Generic/Text only"
as one of the print options.

If you've done the above and still get "ATX Function Error", I'm sorry,
but I've never seen that error message and the only Google hit is your
own post. Are you sure that's exactly the error message you get?


--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

 

[christine]

Hi Lem

Thank you for that. I was mislead in that I thought I would be able to do
something else with the file created. I think the error message was
generated by the software itself. I did work my way around it after
posting, and managed to get the info printed to file, but, as I now know, it
wasn't much use to anything except a printer! Doh!

Thanks again.

Christine

 

[Lem]

Hi Lem

Thank you for that. I was mislead in that I thought I would be able to do
something else with the file created. I think the error message was
generated by the software itself. I did work my way around it after
posting, and managed to get the info printed to file, but, as I now know, it
wasn't much use to anything except a printer! Doh!

Thanks again.

Christine

You should have been able to open the file created by printing to the
Generic/Text only printer using Notepad or something similar. Didn't
that work?

--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

 

[christine]

,Yes, but every way I tried to open it, it turned out in "computer language"
(binary? I don't know what you call it) - that is, full of squares, squiggles
and symbols, which didn't seem to want to be converted to anything else.

Cheers, Chris

 

[Lem]

,Yes, but every way I tried to open it, it turned out in "computer language"
(binary? I don't know what you call it) - that is, full of squares, squiggles
and symbols, which didn't seem to want to be converted to anything else.

Cheers, Chris

That's odd. Did you leave the "print to file" checkbox UNchecked?

--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

 

[christine]

When the print dialogue box comes up within that particular program there is
no "print to file" option. Which is why in my original question I asked
whether there was a way of getting the "print to file" check box included
within that particular print dialogue. But that was before I realised that
it might not do me any good anyway. Glad you think it's odd - I do too! I
appreciate your further thoughts on this.

Cheers, Chris

 

[Lem]

When the print dialogue box comes up within that particular program there is
no "print to file" option. Which is why in my original question I asked
whether there was a way of getting the "print to file" check box included
within that particular print dialogue. But that was before I realised that
it might not do me any good anyway. Glad you think it's odd - I do too! I
appreciate your further thoughts on this.

Cheers, Chris

Sorry, I don't know why it's behaving like that. If all you need is to
preserve a copy of the information, you can try screen captures. This
will not be very satisfactory if the output you're looking at takes up
more than one screen (you'll have to screen cap, scroll, screen cap, etc.)

You can do this with the Print Screen key and MS Paint

(http://www.entity.cc/ICONS/print-screen.php)

but I prefer the far more useful freeware Irfanview, which does screen
captures as well as enabling you to view just about any graphic file
format. http://irfanview.com/

--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

 

[christine]

Thanks Lem, but I really wanted to edit the text output, and it is many
screens long so screen capture is not really the way to go. The only
resolution I have come up with is to go with the program, print out the
resulting text, and then scan it in to a text editing program. It would
have been so much easier to make some sort of text file directly from the
screen(s)!

Cheers, Chris