Suppressing printer dialogue in Word mailmerge

[Mike Lewis]

I am trying to do a Word mailmerge. I want to send the merged output to the printer, without user interaction.

This is my code (with non-essential stuff removed for clarity):

thisform.oDoc.MailMerge.OpenDataSource(lcDataFile)
thisform.oDoc.Mailmerge.Destination = 1 
    && 1 here means send mailmerge to the printer
thisform.oDoc.Mailmerge.Execute

This works OK, except for one detail. Because the mailmerge destination is the printer, Word opens it Printer dialogue so that the user can select the printer.

The trouble is that I am running this code with Word invisible. This means the user cannot see the dialogue and so the application appears to hang. In any case, I don't need the user to pick the printer, because I always want to use a specific printer.

My question is: How can I prevent Word displaying its printer dialogue during a mailmerge? I have tried setting the application object's ActivePrinter property, and have also set DisplayAlerts to 0, but these do not solve the problem.

Thanks in advance.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[DSummZZZ]

Would it be doable to send it to pages first then have Word print them?


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[TamarGranor]

Dave has the right answer, I think. Merge to a new document and then print the document.

Tamar

 

[Mike Lewis]

Dave and Tamar,

Many thanks. I'll take your advice.

The only slight problem is that I'm not sure how to reliably get an object reference to the new document. Any ideas?

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[TamarGranor]

Yep. Right after the merge, the result document is oWord.ActiveDocument.

Tamar

 

[Mike Lewis]

Tamar,

Right after the merge, the result document is oWord.ActiveDocument.

Of course.I should've have realised that.

It's now working, as follows:

thisform.oDoc.MailMerge.OpenDataSource(lcDataFile)
thisform.oDoc.Mailmerge.Destination = 0
    && 0 = send mailmerge to a new doc
thisform.oDoc.Mailmerge.Execute  
loNewDoc = thisform.oWord.ActiveDocument
loNewDoc.Printout()
loNewDoc.Close(0)

Thanks again for your help.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk