Printing to a Dot Matrix Printer? Easy/Hard? Tips?

[dakota81]

Our next step in the application I've been writing is invoicing, having them print out from a dot matrix printer - specifically we have an Okidata 320 Turbo, though if another printer model works better we are open to purchasing another.

Most of our computers run Access 97, and it would be easiest if we used 97 for printed, but we can switch around and put either 2000 or 2002 onto the computer for invoicing.

I want to use the printer specific fonts as there's the obvious speed advantage - though getting the printer to print what's on the screen is a difficult task, as some lines are missing while others are on the wrong row...

Has anyone succeeded in printing forms from Access onto a dot matrix printer? Have any tips or suggestions to make my life easier?


Another hurdle is we want to send 20-30 invoices at a time to the printer, and preliminary testing does not look hopeful - but we do have a Novell server I could hook the printer up to so that the server can act as a queue to send just one document at a time.

 

[fpdkris]

Hi: I actually have used both an Epson dot matrix and an IBM Mainframe band Printer (6262) to print to forms from Access applications (emulating pro-printer XL24e). The simplest thing you should probably consider is using a fixed size font such as Courier and making sure your form is standardized to accept printing at 6 or 8 lines per in. Position your data fields for the spacing you select. Yes, in a Windows application you can do some special spacing and sizing, but with mulit-part forms using your printers expected spacing is real beneficial.
Also although I doubt it pertains to invoices, but Access doesn't really seem to like small forms. Avoid small 4" by 6" stuff unless you are willing to play. I personally have had problem with some smaller custom size documents unless I can get output pretty close to fitting complete records within an 11" length. (whether one document, two or three down the 11 inch page size.

 

[dakota81]

Thank you for the response. I am trying to use a Courier font that is provided with the printer drivers, as using this font drastically increases printer speed. I will try and space the lines more evenly, getting them even down the page. The report I am trying to use has a page header, a page footer, and a details section, then sometimes a details footer. Is it possible that I'm just making the report too complex for the printer to handle? Every time I print a test page, the header page has one line of text placed incorrecly. When I made each other section of the report invisible (so just the page header shows), everything printed out where it should have.

I broke down our invoices into four different page situations that could be printed out. Thinking about them, I can rewrite this to being one all-inclusive form, then a lot of fields will have a null value, and I would send each page as a new document to the printer. I will try this next week, my boss knows the advantages of having a custom invoicing program and I do have the freedom to do whatever is necessary to accomplish this.

I am still curious as to the problem I had with printing multiple documents - when I sent a second report to the printer while it was still printing the first, the data of the two reports kind of got mushed together. Might this be due to bad formatting of the document, or just the limited capabilities of the printer?