Save a report or a form to a common picture file format

[John Dumay]

Hi,

I am able to save reports to wither a snapshot (.snp) file or to a pdf, but
what I really want to do is use VBA to save it to something like a .bmp ot
jpeg file. Is there any code around to do this? I want to use VBA so I can
automate the process for my users.

Any help is of course appreciated.

Regards,

Dr John Dumay

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I am able to save reports to wither a snapshot (.snp) file or to a pdf, but
what I really want to do is use VBA to save it to something like a .bmp ot
jpeg file. Is there any code around to do this? I want to use VBA so I can
automate the process for my users.

One problem is that jpgs or bmps don't handle multiple pages very
well. TIF files do and, I think, are more efficient at handling data
with limited colours such as you'd find in a report. Unless, of
course, it had a lot of graphics.

BMPs are remarkably inefficient in terms of storing data. That is a
jpg might be 30 kb but the same graphic in a bmp might be 1 Mb or 30
times as large. The reason is that a bmp allows for straight transfer
into video card RAM, etc. Whereas a jpg requires lots of CPU to
decode it into video card RAM. This made a lot of sense in the 386
days and somewhat in 486 days but not these days.

I suspect you'd have a lot more success seeing if anyone has made a
PDF to jpg/bmp/tif converter.

Finally though I'd search around or ask in the
microsoft.public.vb.general newsgroup to see if anyone knows of sample
code to create graphic files. There likely is.

Then you could code your report headers, details and footers yourself.
A lot more work almost certainly but you'd have complete control of
the process.

Tony