Printing problems with Rich Text and InfoPath Forms Server

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Steve - 17 Oct 2007 19:56 GMT

Hi,

I have a browser based form with several rich text fields on it. If the
user enters a lot of text into a field (usually just plain text) everything
appears fine on the screen however when they print it some of the text is
missing and there is usually several blank pages printed in the middle as
well?

I've tried it on different computers and with different printers, but the
results are the same.

Is this a bug or is there something I can do to control the printing? Thanks.

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S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton - 18 Oct 2007 10:09 GMT

How are you printing? Are you using the default print button on the toolbar
of a browser form? And what is a lot of text? Can you please copy/paste the
text in Word, count the characters, and report the amount back to me? Thanks.
---
S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> Is this a bug or is there something I can do to control the printing? Thanks.

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Steve - 18 Oct 2007 20:19 GMT

Hi,

The form has a print view and the rich text fields are set to "Expand to
show all text."

The problem doesn't seem to be related to the number of characters - it
seems to be related to the number of lines. From our testing it seems to
happen around 100 lines of text. Even if most of the lines only have a few
characters.

We're using the browsers print button...

Thanks for you help.

> How are you printing? Are you using the default print button on the toolbar
> of a browser form? And what is a lot of text? Can you please copy/paste the
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> >
> > Is this a bug or is there something I can do to control the printing? Thanks.

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S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton - 22 Oct 2007 05:19 GMT

Hi Steve,

I copied/pasted 573 lines of text from Notepad into a Rich Text Box on a
browser form and used the Print View button. The Print View looked fine,
however, when I used the Print Preview (browser's menu item) I saw that the
right margin was being cut off, text was being cut off at the top and bottom
margins of each page, and a whole blank page was displayed on the first page.
I did not find any missing text within my document itself, though. Playing
with the settings for the page margins did not help much. My conclusion:
While the data is there, it is not being displayed correctly when it is
printed.

If you want to print your browser form correctly and in whatever format you
desire (HTML, Word, PDF, etc), you could program this functionality yourself.
However, you would have to move off the page provided by Forms Services and
create your own custom page to host your forms. I've just written an article
about this that will hopefully be out early next month. It is quite a lot of
extra work, so you'll have to decide whether it is a viable solution or not.
The only other thing I can advise you is to report this as a bug. I'll do the
same through my own channels.
---
S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
> > >
> > > Is this a bug or is there something I can do to control the printing? Thanks.

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Steve - 22 Oct 2007 13:20 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for verifying that it's not just something we're doing.

We've noticed we can use a plain text field and the printing seems to be
better - so for now we'll just give the user 2 options...rich text with
questionable printing, or plain text with good printing.

Steve.

> Hi Steve,
>
[quoted text clipped - 51 lines]
> > > >
> > > > Is this a bug or is there something I can do to control the printing? Thanks.

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