Printing 3 + 1 copies

rbuser

Customer wants a delivery note to print 3 copies followed by 1 copy of Terms
and Conditions.
I created a report with two Section subreports. The first subreport
contains the delivery note and has ParentPrinterSetup:=False, the report it
contains (the delivery note) has PrinterSetup.Copies:=3. The second
subreport contains the T&Cs.

On printing I only get 1 copy of the delivery note. What am I doing wrong?

Regards
Paul

nicocizik

Hi Paul,

The copies property cannot be set for individual section subreports. In
order to get the effect you are after, you could either dynamically create
two more section subreports to act as copies of the first one, or keep the
Terms and Conditions page in a separate template and load and print it as a
new job after the three copies of the first report have finished.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Hi Nico

I have seen the examples of how to create a subreport in code but it isnt
practical to create all the contents object by object. Is it possible to
have all the subreports.reports point to the one existing subreport.report -
or to copy it?

Regards
Paul

rbuser

Hello again Nico

I decided to just duplicate the subreports by copy and paste (horrible for
maintenance). It caused some difficulty in that variables in the footers
are set to the values of invisible DBCalcs in the detail subreports and the
names of these objects are specifically required in the code.

The result only worked for a single document. If the data extraction was to
print several documents the data navigation goes crazy (I think each
subreport carries on through the data instead of resetting to the documents
start position each time - I didnt actually look too closely, just saw it
was wrong).

I assume the above problem would persist if I had been able to follow your
suggestion of creating additional subreports in code.

I havent quite worked out how to do it as seperate print jobs. For each in
a list of document numbers set an sql parameter. Set ShowPrinterDialog to
true and print one. Set ShowPrintDialog to false and print another (I'm not
sure if printer settings will persist or I will have to read them from the
first print and write them to the second). Print again. Finally print
another report with just the T&Cs. Is this what you had in mind?

Finally - you can set the PrinterSetup.Copies for subreport.report - it just
doesnt do anything ;-)

Regards
Paul

rbuser

Hello again again Nico

It turns out that was given incorrect requirements. What the customer
actually wants is to print to 4 part laser paper - parts 1,2 and 3 are
copies of each page of data and part 4 is the T&Cs. So if there where 2
documents d1(2 pages) and d2 (1 page) they want
d1 - p1
d1 - p1
d1 - p1
T&Cs
d1 p2
d1 p2
d1 p2
T&Cs
d2 p1
d2 p1
d2 p1
T&Cs

Without the T&Cs this is easily achieved by setting turning Collation off
and setting copies to 3.

In order to print the T&Cs I tried putting them into a section subreport in
the footer - but it doesnt print. (It does print in the group footer - but
thats no good). So the only problem to solve now is printing the T&Cs.

Regards
Paul

nicocizik

Hi Paul,

After further research, it is possible to assign individual copies to a
Section style subreport by allowing your printer to handle the copies (if it
is capable).

1. Create a section subreport with ParentPrinterSetup set to False and
NewPrintJob set to True.
2. Inside the child report set the PrinterSetup.Copies to 3 and Collation
to False.
3. Use the DelegateCopies property to give control of copies to the
printer. Assign this property before calling Report.Print...

ppChildReport1.PrinterSetup.DelegateCopies := True;

4. Add another section subreport containing the Terms and Conditions.
5. Print the report.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Thanks Nico

That was a very interesting answer - I shall salt it away. Unfortunately
the requirement has changed slightly so I shall post a new question called
'4 part printing'.

Regards
Paul