Windows Printing Concepts

You must set-up your Windows printing system correctly in order to print forms and reports successfully using Visual Forms Builder. While you should refer to your Windows documentation on setting up printers, the following tips and suggestions may get you productive with Visual Builder more quickly.

How do I control which printer a form goes to?

This is easy to do. Edit the form and click on the Form Properties toolbar button:

Click on the Print To combobox and select the printer you want to use. Then save the changed form. If the printer you want to use is not on the list, you will need to install it. You can do this by accessing the Windows Control Panel and selecting the Printers icon.

Make the printer you want to create forms for the default printer.

This point is important. Visual Builder, and especially its Wizards, always assume that the form it is creating is for use by the default printer. You can change/set the default printer by accessing the Windows Control Panel and selecting the Printers icon.

If you don't set the correct default printer, you, or one of the Wizards you use, may create a form that has the wrong page dimensions and margins. Setting the correct default printer avoids this problem.

Be sure to select the correct printer driver!

Firstly, you must install the printer driver that matches the printer you use. This is important. Locate the correct model of printer you have from the list of available printers offered by Windows. If you do not see the printer you use on the available list, try to determine if a special printer driver disk came with your printer. (These days it is very unusual to get a new printer without a Windows printer driver disk supplied.)

You should always use the printer driver that exactly matches your printer. For example, if you own a WizBang Model 750, you should be using the WizBang Model 750 printer driver. What happens if you use a printer driver from a different brand of printer or a different model? For example, the WizBang Model 550?

1. Printing may not work at all or you may print garbage (nonsense characters) only. Often, however, you can avoid this problem by establishing what your printer is compatible with and selecting the closest matching printer driver.

2. The margin settings may be wrong. This problem can result in the cutting off of printed information on the right and bottom margins of your page. This problem particularly effects laser printers--even slightly different models of the same brands.

3. Printing may be of poor quality or less than its potential quality. A printer driver for your specific brand of printer usually prints the best quality your printer is capable of.

4. Printing may be wrong in some other way. Perhaps fonts will print very small or overwrite each other, or the wrong colour is printed, or a box or circle is not drawn at all.

When should an alternative (the 'wrong') printer driver be used?

1. Only use an alternative printer driver when you have no choice/cannot obtain the correct driver. (Most printer drivers these days are available for download from the Internet.) Try to determine what your model and brand of printer your printer is supposed to be compatible with. For example, most laser printers are compatible with the HP Laserjet II series. Most, but not all, dot-matrix printers tend to be Epson FX or LQ compatible.

2. The printer driver you are using is giving you problems. Unfortunately, many printer drivers contain nasty bugs that can crash your computer. Incredibly, even a few printer drivers from major brands suffer from these types of problems. In these cases you should select the next closest model--preferably the model before your model. If things start working correctly and Visual Builder and/or your other software no longer crashes after printing, then you can be pretty sure that you have found a problem in the driver. You should report the problem to the manufacturer and see if an update is available.

Setting the correct page size.

Many users successfully install the correct printer but then forget about setting its correct page size. This is particularly important in Australia where many printers and programs do not assume A4 stationary. (The most common Australian page size in use. Many assume "letter" sizes which are shorter than A4.)

After you have installed your printer driver you are usually given the option to access its Setup. The set-up option allows you to specify the paper size you use. Be sure that you set this to match the paper size you actually use.

Tricks and traps when printing labels.

The feeding mechanism used to control paper flow through your printer also affects the paper size you choice. Laser printers and most inkjet printers have inbuilt sheet feeders. Often the only paper feed choice is such sheet feeders. Dot-matrix printers usually utilise either tractor feeders or sheet feeders.

If you are using a paper sheet feeder then the size of the page is the size of the paper that is being fed through the feeder. Normally this will be A4 or a similar size. It is an all or nothing affair. Either you feed in and print on an entire sheet or paper or you don't. That is to say, Windows can't print on half a sheet of paper.

If you are using a tractor feeder and intend to print labels then you should probably set the paper size to the size of the label. This will minimise label wastage. For example, if you are using Visual Builder to print stock delivery labels and only 1 label was printed on the sheet of labels fed through a laser printer, the entire page is ejected with the other labels left blank. This is not a significant problem if you are printing a large number of labels at a time. But it a major problem when you only need to print one label at a time!

If the paper size is set to the size of the label, then when Windows ejects the page, it will move (feed) only to the start of the next set of labels. This approach can offer considerable savings.

When you select Setup during the installation of your printer driver, (or when you go back to edit your printer driver settings) you will see that Windows offers many standard page size variations. If the dimensions of your labels do not match any of the available standard choices, you should select "User Defined" and specify the physical dimensions of the label plus make allowances for the distance from one label to the next. This will become your new "page size".

When you stop printing labels you will need to change the page size settings again, back to the normal page size you use. A better approach you can use is to install your printer driver twice, each with a different page size and then select between them, depending on the print task. Windows 95/98 and NT allow you to install a printer driver twice and give each a different name. For example, "MyPrinter" and "MyPrinter (Labels)".