Report Going to Wrong Printer

[dennis g]

Have a database running off a network drive. When a user in KC runs one of three reports, they print to her network printer, but when they run the other two reports, they print here in Topeka to our network printer. There is no way for this to happen in Access, right? But it does. I'm wondering if it because I have the menu bar hidden. When the user asks for the report, it comes up in print preview mode, and possibly is defaulted to the printer here (it was designed here). The user cannot change the printer because the printer options box is inaccessible???
Does this make any sense?

 

[Pat Hartman]

Perhaps when you created those reports, you set them to print on a specific printer rather than the default Windows printer. Open them in design view, go to the print dialog and select the default printer. Save the reports.

 

[dennis g]

Thanks, Pat. I'll give it a try.

 

[ktariske]

Print Dialog?

You mention print dialog in your answer for default printer, but where is that exactly? Printer setup???

 

[Pat Hartman]

I don't have time to test this theory out for you but here goes - I think that if you (the designer) never specify a specific printer (which means that the default printer on your system will be used), the report always goes to the default printer without a problem. No matter who prints it. However, if you direct it to a specific printer, then when someone trys to print the report on a different PC and that printer is not available to them, that's when the problem arises.

Choose Print from the file menu to get the option to select a printer.

 

[ktariske]

Anyway..

To specify a network printer as default for everyone???

 

[Pat Hartman]

Once you have specified a "specific" printer, I don't know if choosing the default printer will go back to having Access use the individual PC's default printer. You'll have to try it. I don't have a network here to work with so I can't test anything.

In the shared copy of the PC, open the report, choose print from the file menu, choose your default printer. Save, close. Now try printing from a diffent PC. I don't know whether this will cause Access to use that PC's default printer or to complain because it can't find "your" printer.

There is no setting that says "use default printer" so you can't redirect the printer by setting a property.

Besides, you haven't even said what your problem is.

 

[ktariske]

Printing,

Many people in my department use my access front end to print box labels and shipping lables, using 2 different printers.

Many people are having problems with the print dialog boxes and in most cases, can't set the properties correctly, wasting time, paper, and my time. So I was hoping that if the report selected a default network printer by default, this problem might get solved. Also it would save the hastle of selecting 2 different printers for the 2 different reports.

And sometimes I run into the problem wher even if the default printer on the PC is set to the correct printer.

Kriss.