Is there a way of specifying print options for the send event script step? I am working on a solution which allows users to select a number of documents from a checklist. The intention is to be able to print the selected documents with a single button press. The documents are multi page PDF's stored in a server location. I have successfully scripted this using the Send Event script step but I find I can only print to the current default printer and I cannot select any print options. I would like to be able to specify the print options as the given documents require printing to a specific printer (not the default printer) and may require colour printing, 2 sided print, tray selection etc.
How I am getting around this at the moment is selecting Open Document in the Send Event options ("odoc") which opens each selected document in Adobe for the user to then print. This is OK but I would like to eliminate that part of the user intervention.
Am I perhaps barking up the wrong tree with the Send Event script step?
Here's the relevant part of the script (after setting up variables with relevant filepath and filename etc)
Thanks in advance.
Possibly, check out the documentation for PRINTUI.DLL. Here's some documentation I found:
Command Line Printer Control
However this is not really within the purvey of FileMaker, so support/assistance here may be limited. I would find someone that's more handy with writing batch files as most FM devs only have an intermittent need.
There's a number of plugins that will merge multiple PDF or .docx files into a single PDF file that you could then export and open from a temporary path, giving you your entire print queue in a single file rather than messily sending it all via send event. MonkeyBread and 360works Scribe are two off the top of my head that I know that do this.
There are also printer plugins (EG myfmbutler printerswitch) that can programmatically control printer preferences via the filemaker calc engine.
Part of the problem with your approach is that you're trying to control printer options set by another program (adobe) after launch. I'm not sure if that's possible at all. I'm also not sure if the FM plugins available can set defaults that cascade to a system level default (EG set it in filemaker and inherited by acrobat).
Combining PDFs together would at least guarantee that your users only have to set printer settings once, rather than each time something is opened.