Shelling out to Adobe

[Hank Reed]

I have been using the ShellExecute command for about a year to print
out a list of PDF files. It's a great capability. Of course, the
documents are actually printed by the Adobe application. We have
recently added a new, high speed, black and white, printer which would
be perfect for the engineering documents I want to print.
Does anyone know if the destination printer can be selected when
using ShellExecute? There is a string field called parameters which
might be usable for that purpose but I have no protocol information
for it. I have looked through Adobe help and could find nothing under
the headings of "Printers", "Selecting", "Command Lines" or "DOS"
I don't want to change the windows default printer even briefly.
As a work around I can make it work by opening Adobe manually and
selecting the desired printer. All subsequent documents then go to
that printer. I would rather set it programatically.
Thanks,
Hank Reed

[Salad]

Hank Reed wrote:

I have been using the ShellExecute command for about a year to print
out a list of PDF files. It's a great capability. Of course, the
documents are actually printed by the Adobe application. We have
recently added a new, high speed, black and white, printer which would
be perfect for the engineering documents I want to print.
Does anyone know if the destination printer can be selected when
using ShellExecute?
How would that help?
There is a string field called parameters which
might be usable for that purpose but I have no protocol information
for it.
How would that help.
I have looked through Adobe help and could find nothing under
the headings of "Printers", "Selecting", "Command Lines" or "DOS"
That would help.
I don't want to change the windows default printer even briefly.
As a work around I can make it work by opening Adobe manually and
selecting the desired printer.
That would work.
All subsequent documents then go to
that printer. I would rather set it programatically.
How would setting a printer destination in Access help in setting a
printer in Adobe? If you can''t set (don't know) the command line
parameters when opening Adobe I'd be at a loss how Access can do it any
better.

Thanks,
Hank Reed

Subscribe to a newsgroup for Adobe and find out what the parameters are.
If there are some parameters, try them out...make sure you change
shellexecute to pass the string instead of null.

[Hank Reed]

I may not have explained my question so you could understand it. I want
to know if there is a way to embed printer information into the
parameters field that is part of the ShellExecute command I use to open
Adobe and print documents remotely form Access.
As I understand the fields of the call, there is:
An Operation field
A file name field
A Parameters field
A Directory field
A Show Command field
I know nothing of the usage of the Parameters field and was
wondering if it could be used to specify the printer that Adobe would
use.
My command string is typically:
shellexecute Me.hwnd, "print", FileName, "", 0, SW_SHOWNORMAL

Thanks,
Hank Reed

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[Jerry Boone]

I don't know about shell - but you could add a reference to Acrobat, then do
something like this...

air code here but I would think it goes something like this...

dim ar as acrobat.application
set ar = new acrobat.application
ar.show = false 'or true
ar.open "x:\somefile.pdf"
ar.print
set ar = nothing

You might also check for errors when creating the ar variable to see if
Acrobat is not installed.

Here is a link to a pdf that contains some of the props and methods - might
have to translate some of the cpp to vb though...

http://partners.adobe.com/asn/acrobat/docs/iacovr.pdf

Good luck!

--
Jerry Boone
Analytical Technologies, Inc.
http://www.antech.biz
Secure Hosting and Development Solutions for ASP, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and
Access

"Hank Reed" <ha********@aol.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.frii.net...

I may not have explained my question so you could understand it. I want
to know if there is a way to embed printer information into the
parameters field that is part of the ShellExecute command I use to open
Adobe and print documents remotely form Access.
As I understand the fields of the call, there is:
An Operation field
A file name field
A Parameters field
A Directory field
A Show Command field
I know nothing of the usage of the Parameters field and was
wondering if it could be used to specify the printer that Adobe would
use.
My command string is typically:
shellexecute Me.hwnd, "print", FileName, "", 0, SW_SHOWNORMAL

Thanks,
Hank Reed

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