This article begins with the basic steps to use the
Installation is very simple, generally no problems occur during that. After installation, you will need to add it to your toolbox so that you can then drop it onto your Form:
It can be done as follows:
If you don't want specific controls on the Form to get printed(for instance, command buttons), you can set
For centering the printed form on the page, in the horizontal or vertical dimension, or both, you can use the
When the Form or control you are printing is smaller than the Margins of the printed page,
To zoom the form to fill the printed page, setting the
To add headers and footers to the printout, there are three properties that can be set to point at individual controls:
So, you will have to add two extra Panels to the Form inside which, you will add the controls that are to appear as header and footer. Then, set
Margin widths are controlled by the
You may have to print different controls from a single Form on each page of the printout. You can do this by changing the
You can also print different Forms on each page of the printout, by adding a
You can print more than one Form or container control on the same page by using the
To print a Form which is larger than the paper size over multiple pages, the
To print a control inside a
It is very often required to print a Form or control scaled to custom size.It can be done as follows:
You could use the following code to achieve this:
To print without showing the 'Printing Page' dialog, use
You may also need to distribute the
PrintForm component and simple Form printing, describes various options for customised printing with code examples where necessary, and addresses some problems faced with the usage.Background
Sometime back, I was working on a project in VB.NET, which required printing reports. It was a very lengthy job as back then, no such component was available. This was a big drawback with working in VB.NET as compared to VB. But now, the release of thePrintForm component has proven a boon for both, VB.NET developers and those who are trying to upgrade their projects from VB to VB.NET, as you now no longer need to generate long sequences of GDI calls. You can simply print your Form, as desired, with minimal code. However, despite the ease and simplicity of the usage of the PrintForm component, problems and doubts about this have been posted on forums of almost all developer sites and hardly any examples given. This is what made me decide to write about this component.How to start
First things first. You need to download and install thePrintForm component if you have not already done that. Here is a link to the download http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/aa701261.aspxInstallation is very simple, generally no problems occur during that. After installation, you will need to add it to your toolbox so that you can then drop it onto your Form:
- In the Visual Studio .NET editor, right click on the 'General' tab of the Toolbox, and select 'Customize Toolbox...'
or add it to the Windows Forms tab
or create a new tab. - Select the .NET Framework Components tab of the Customize Toolbox Dialog and scroll down until you find '
PrintForm'. - Check it and click OK.Now you can drag a
PrintFormcomponent from the General Tab of the Toolbox onto the Form's Component tray.PrintFormextends each control on your Form, and the Form itself, with new properties, which can be set according to requirements.
Printing the Form
To print the entire form, perform the following steps:- Drag a
PrintFormcomponent onto your Form from the Visual Studio Toolbox - Set the
PrintForm.BodyContainerproperty to reference your Form - Add a button and button click handler. In the handler call
PrintForm.Print()
Print Previewing the Form
Often you need to print preview the form before actual printing, especially during testing, so that you can adjust the properties accordingly, and of course not to forget, to save paper (and hence trees)It can be done as follows:
- Drag a
PrintFormcomponent onto the Form from the Visual Studio Toolbox - Set the
PrintForm.BodyContainerproperty to reference your Form - Drag a
PrintPreviewDialogcomponent onto your Form from the Visual Studio Toolbox - Set the
PrintPreviewDialog.Documentproperty to reference thePrintFormcomponent - Add a button and button click handler. In the handler call
PrintPreviewDialog.ShowDialog()Hide Copy CodePrivate Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
' If you don't want the print button to print the print button
Button1.Visible = False
' Set the PrintAction to display a Print Preview dialog
PrintForm1.PrintAction = Printing.PrintAction.PrintToPreview
' This prints a copy of the form as it appears in the PrintPreview
PrintForm1.Print()
' Display the print button again on the form
Button1.Visible = True
End Sub
Customizing the Form Printout
In order to change the Background color of the Form on the printout, you can setBackColorWhilePrinting of the Form. The background color of all the controls on the form will get changed. However, if you want to specify different colors for different forms, you can set this property for the individual controls.If you don't want specific controls on the Form to get printed(for instance, command buttons), you can set
VisibleWhitePrinting property for those controls on the Form.For centering the printed form on the page, in the horizontal or vertical dimension, or both, you can use the
PrintForm.CenterStyle property.When the Form or control you are printing is smaller than the Margins of the printed page,
PrintForm uses theCentreStyle setting to center the output, alternatively to print the output at the top left of the Margin rectangle set CenterStyle = CenterStyle.None.To zoom the form to fill the printed page, setting the
AutoFit property to one of these values controls this behavior: PageElement.None, PageElement.Body, PageElement.All.To add headers and footers to the printout, there are three properties that can be set to point at individual controls:
HeaderContainer, BodyContainer and FooterContainer. The contents of the control referenced in the BodyContainer property are rendered inside the Margin rectangle on the page, the HeaderContainerand FooterContainer (if specified) are rendered directly above and beneath the Margin rectangle respectively.So, you will have to add two extra Panels to the Form inside which, you will add the controls that are to appear as header and footer. Then, set
HeaderContainer to the header panel, BodyContainer to the Form andFooterContainer to the footer panel, making sure that they are not visible on the surface of the Form by setting their Location appropriately (eg. to (-1000, -1000)) or making them visible only while printing.Margin widths are controlled by the
Margins property of the PageSettings object. To set margin widths:- Set the
PrintDocument.DefaultPageSettings.Marginsproperty to control the default margin size of all pages printed by thePrintDocumentHide Copy CodeByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Dim newMargins As System.Drawing.Printing.Margins
newMargins = New System.Drawing.Printing.Margins(50, 50, 50, 50)
Me.PrintForm1.DefaultPageSettings.Margins = newMargins - or set
e.PageSettings.Marginsin thePrintDocument.QueryPageSettingsevent to set each printed page's Margin size individually:Hide Copy CodeByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.QueryPageSettingsEventArgs) Handles
PrintForm1.QueryPageSettings
Dim newMargins As System.Drawing.Printing.Margins
newMargins = New System.Drawing.Printing.Margins(50, 50, 50, 50)
e.PageSettings.Margins = newMargins
PrintForm.PrintBorders property.You may have to print different controls from a single Form on each page of the printout. You can do this by changing the
BodyContainer property of PrintForm for each page.You can also print different Forms on each page of the printout, by adding a
PrintForm to each form, with itsBodyContainer set to the entire Form. Add a main Form to the project, containing a PrintChainManagercomponent and add a reference to each of the PrintForm controls to the PrintChainManager.Documentscollection.You can print more than one Form or container control on the same page by using the
PrintForm.PrintControl() method which allows you to render any control you like at any position on the page.To print a Form which is larger than the paper size over multiple pages, the
PrintForm.PrintControl method is used to render a portion of the Form into the MarginBounds rectangle on each successive page. The Form is divided into a number of 'Tiles' each with an offset from the origin (top left) of the control. To print each Tile repeatedly print the Form, negatively offset by the specified amount, while the Graphics.Clip region is set to the page MarginBounds rectangle to exclude any portion of the Control not in the current Tile.To print a control inside a
UserControl with a different BackColor, set UseLegacyPrinting,BackColorWhilePrinting, VisibleWhilePrinting settings on controls that are inside a UserControl.It is very often required to print a Form or control scaled to custom size.It can be done as follows:
- Drag a
PrintFormcomponent onto your Form - Set the
PrintForm.BodyContainerproperty to reference your Form - Set
PrintForm.AutoFit = None, to preventPrintFormfrom automatically scaling up the Form to fit the page. - Set
PrintForm.ManualZoomto the scale you want, say 0.5 - Set
PrintForm.CenterStyleto control how the image is centered on the page. - Add a button and button click handler. In the handler call
PrintForm.Print()
Or use thePrintForm.PrintControl()method and set the scale of the output in the 4th parameter.
PrintForm.Print() without displaying the Form, once you have setup the required PrintForm properties. Basically, the form is visible, but just out of view.Printing to a file
To print the Page image to a file, use a specialization of the .NET classPrintController, calledFilePrintController. FilePrintController supplies a Graphics object obtained from a Bitmap to the standard printing mechanism. This class can be used to print to any of the file formats .NET supports even if you were not using PrintForm to render your printed output.You could use the following code to achieve this:
Hide Copy Code
' Save an image of the Form
Dim target As Control = Me
Dim r As Rectangle = New Rectangle(New Point(0, 0), target.Size)
Dim img As New Bitmap(r.Width, r.Height)
Dim g As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(img)
Me.PrintForm1.PrintControl(g, r, target, 1.0)
g.Dispose()
img.Save("c:\image.bmp", System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Bmp)
img.Dispose() Similarly, you can print multiple Page images to a TIFF file, using the above class.To print without showing the 'Printing Page' dialog, use
StandardPrintController. Set the PrintControllerproperty of PrintForm as follows, before calling Print, or doing a PrintPreview:Hide Copy Code
Me.PrintForm1.PrintController = New
System.Drawing.Printing.StandardPrintController()Some Problems
You may find that some of the controls on the Form aren't displayed at print. This is because some controls in .NET and some third party controls are not fully managed or are not written according to the .NET control guidelines. So, they are marked as 'Legacy' controls. Select the control and set it'sUseLegacyPrinting property to true. This should solve the problem. A very few legacy controls may not respond to the methods thatPrintForm uses to get them to render themselves into the printout.Hide Copy Code
Private Sub PrintForm1_PreDraw(ByVal e As _
TMGDevelopment.PrintForm.PreDrawEventArgs) Handles PrintForm1.PreDraw
' look for the control we're interested in
If e.Control Is Me.NChart1 Then
' this code is from the following Nevron sample and is specific to the
'Nevron ActiveX control:
' Nevron\3DChart\Example Files\Examples\3DChart\Visual Basic
'6\ImportExport\Clipboard
Dim vFile As Object
Dim bUseWindowDim, bOK As Boolean
Dim nHeight, nWidth, nBitsPerPixel As Integer
bUseWindowDim = True
nBitsPerPixel = 24
nHeight = e.Bounds.Height
nWidth = e.Bounds.Width
' a variant with an empty string indicates that we want to use clipboard
vFile = ""
NChart1.ImportExport.SaveBitmapImage(vFile, bUseWindowDim, nWidth,
nHeight, nBitsPerPixel)
' this is generic code for getting a bitmap from clipboard and drawing it:
Dim iData As IDataObject = Clipboard.GetDataObject()
Dim img As System.Drawing.Bitmap = iData.GetData(DataFormats.Bitmap, True)
e.Graphics.DrawImage(img, e.Bounds)
e.OwnerDrawn = True ' tell PrintForm we've drawn this control
End If
End Sub The control may offer some other mechanism for obtaining an image of it's contents. If this is the case PrintFormprovides an event, the PreDraw event, that you can handle to take charge of rendering the control yourself. This has been shown in the above code snippet.You may also need to distribute the
PrintForm and printchaining assemblies with your application. There are several ways to locate the correct assemblies:- Build an installer project for your application and it will automatically pull in the correct versions. Or set copy local to
true for the printform and printchaining references in your project, this will cause VS.NET to copy them through to your bin directory and you can pick them up from there with your EXE and copy them to the same location as your EXE on the target machine. Or copy them manually from their installed locationsUpdate Contact :
No Wa/Telepon (puat) : 085267792168
No Wa/Telepon (fajar) : 085369237896
Email : Fajarudinsidik@gmail.com
No Wa/Telepon (puat) : 085267792168
No Wa/Telepon (fajar) : 085369237896
Email: Fajarudinsidik@gmail.com
atau Kirimkan Private messanger melalui email dengan klik tombol order dibawah ini :
