Report output to text file

theburnou

Hi,

I would like to print a navision report to a text file without asking for the file name.

Is it possible ?

It would be great if the file name can be stotred in Navision.

Thanks for your help.

Marije_Brummel

Do you mean export it to a HTML file?

theburnou

No, just text file. The aim is to send it to a generic / Text printer after being processed.

Marije_Brummel

If the filename is required by the printerdriver then I do not think it is possible.

It is the same as faxing, you cannot give the faxnumber from the customer to the printdriver.

Unless there is some trick/possibility in the printerdriver. What printerdriver are you using?

theburnou

I am using a generic / Text driver to be fast because i need to print about 800 pages a day

CodeGenius

Hi theburnou,

I am not sure if this is helpful. You want to print to a textfile. To my knowledge there is no printer driver that does not ask for a filename.

Another option is to print to PDF. A PDF printer that does not ask for a filename (if setup correctly) is PDFCreator. (Look for the auto-save options)

You can download this Printer Driver from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Hope this helps you.

theburnou

I found a way to print to a file without being asked for a filename:

* Add a new printer that prints to the special "File:" port (see question 1).
* From the printers' panel, right click on the printer you have just added and select Properties.
* A panel showing the properties for this printer will pop up, click on the Details tab of this panel.
* Click on the Add Port... button.
* The Add Port panel will pop up, click on the Other radio button, and make sure Local Port is highlighted, click on OK.
* A small panel asking for the name of the port will pop up, enter the name of a file in the edit box, for example C:\Output.prn.
* Click on OK to dismiss the panel asking for the port name.
* Click on OK to dismiss the printer properties panel.
* If you now 'print' to this printer the output will be sent directly to C:\Output.prn (or wherever), overwriting what was there before.


But I need to modify the name of the file for each generated file but not interactively.

Has any one heard of an ocx by wich the filename can be set as a parameter ?

Any ideas ?

Thanks.

themave

This is a slightly different approach, but you could use a dataport to export the data, and then use access to format the reports. It would be a two step approach, but would certainly work.

It is easy to get a dataport to create the file name for you on the fly, and even have it created in a specific directory.

Then set up an access routine to import, format and print your reports.

aztecconsulting

I do a lot of writing to text files, here is some boilerplate code I use:

First I set the filename, this can come from a field in a table if you like.
LogFileName :='\\Server\path\path\Sample.Log';

Now, open the file either for the first time or append to the end.

//Open files
IF EXISTS(LogFileName) THEN
BEGIN
LogFile.WRITEMODE:=TRUE;
LogFile.TEXTMODE:=TRUE;
LogFile.OPEN(LogFileName);
LogFile.SEEK(LogFile.LEN);
END
ELSE
BEGIN
LogFile.TEXTMODE:=TRUE;
LogFile.CREATE(LogFileName);
END;

Now at any point I can write to the file.
LogFile.WRITE( [data to write] );

Finally, I use this to close the file.
LogFile.CLOSE;

This works for me when I need to do special calculations or string concatenation.