Print Configuration Dialog Box

Question

Hello all,
    I want to enable the print configuration dialog box pop up when a button is clicked in vi.
This is standard windows printer configuration dialog box which pops up when any file (xls,txt etc.)
is tried printing.Any suggestions please ?
Also i have attached the standard windows print dialog box, just incase.
Thanks in advance,
Nalin
Attachments:
print.JPG ‏33 KB

Answer 1

In general use a property node with nothing attached to it in LabVIEW with the property Printing >> Default Printer or Printing >> Avalaible Printers to return the printers configured with Windows. One of these string items can be wired into the printer input of the report generation Print Report VI to select a printer.
In regards to the Microsoft Common Dialog 6.0 ActiveX controls, the printer selection from the dialog seems to be determined by the hDC output, which stands for hardware device context. If you modify the demo posted above to send in the appropriate flag value, either an informational or a direct hardware device context handle is returned in the ICommon property hDC. Input the flag value 512 to the ICommonDialog property Flags to return an hardware device context handle from the hDC property, or 1024 to return an informational device context.
More information about how to extract any meaningful information from this I32 number can doubtlessly be found at msdn.com, but I'm not sure personally how to do it. Specifically, here are a few posts to start your search at:
Using the Print Dialog Box
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon98/html/vbconusingprintdialogb...
Common DialogControl Constants
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cmdlg98/html/vbidxCommonDialogContr...
Alternatively, consider avoiding the Common Dialog Control calling a dll that will directly return the selected printer name from a dialog:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;322710
Hope this helps!
Jarrod S.
National Instruments