How do I send a printout to a file?
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Summary
For any document that you produce from Platinum to a printer, you can also save it to a text file by overriding the printer output. The following article outlines how this is done.
More Information
Overriding the Printout
- When you are printing anything from Platinum get to the point where the next button you press would normally print and press <Alt+P>.
- Press <Ctrl+F1> to open the "Print Record Search" window and press [Search] to bring up a list of print records.
- There should be a print record '98' which should have the description of "Print to File", select it and then press [Edit] to open the "Print Record Properties" window.
- Move onto the "Device" tab, the "Default Print Device" should read '..\SXIcons\Output\NoPrint.TXT'. This is the name of the file that the print will go to once the print has finished. This can be altered but the default should be fine.
- Press [Done] and then [Accept] to save the changes.
- Press [Choose], this will have selected this print record and will close the Print record windows.
- Press the appropriate key to print.
- This will go through much the same process as a normal print (i.e. you will see the normal "Printer Status" box).
Viewing the file
There are 2 ways of opening a document printed to file and they are as follows:
- On the PC's windows desktop there should be an icon called "Platinum folder". Within here there should be another folder called "Output". Within here if the default setting has been used, there will be a file called 'NoPrint.TXT'. Left click twice to open in Notepad.
- If the above method does not work or you do not wish to minimise Platinum, you can do the following:
- Press <Alt+P>.
- Press <Ctrl+F1> to open the "Print Record Search" window and press [Search] to bring up a list of print records.
- There should be a print record '98' which should have the description of "Print to File", select it and then press [Edit] to open the "Print Record Properties" window.
- Move onto the "Device" tab and onto "Default Print Device".
- Press <Alt+O> to open the file.
 | Appending - Bear in mind in both cases the "Print to file" text file will be appended with every new printout. In other words, if 2 reports are printed to file one after the other, the second report will add itself to the bottom of the first. This is ideal for month end prints as it means all printouts related to a particular month can be stored in the same file. However if you need each print to be in a separate text file, you will need to rename this file before you print by right clicking it and selecting "Rename" to a different file name. |
 | If you wish to open for example a fixed width style Platinum report in Excel all you need to do is go to " File Open" within Excel and browse to the location of the 'NoPrint.TXT' specified in the "Print Device" line and use the "Text import wizard" to chop the info into columns. Some reports will work better then others when doing this but for the most part after chopping the page headings out once in Excel it's a good way to manipulate report outputs quickly for those more au-fait with Excel. |
See also
- How do I print and email a PDF?
- How do I setup printing to PDF?
- How do I select different Windows printers?
- How do I setup a new printer?
- How do I add header and/or footer text to documents?
- How do I produce two copies?
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