Print PDF from VBA

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Mark Tangard - 10 Mar 2007 07:05 GMT

A long shot, maybe: Is there way, maybe using Shell, to print a PDF file from
VBA code?

Goal: To print all PDFs in a folder *in order* (alpha by filename), in a way
that doesn't require opening each one or combining them into a large file(s).

Selecting multiple PDF files from an Explorer window and clicking File-> Print
does in fact send them to printer, but the print in some bizarre order I can't
discover!

Can I use VBA's FileSearch property to collect the filenames & then call another
macro within that loop that sends each file to the printer, with a DoEvents line
(or some equivalent to Background:=False) after each one, so they'll print one
at a time?

Is this clear? Is there an easier way somewhere?

Word 2003, WinXP, Acrobat 6.0 standard.

Thanks in advance
Mark Tangard

Reply to this Message

Mark Tangard - 10 Mar 2007 14:03 GMT

In case anyone's interested, I found a nice one already:
PDF Toolkit. http://www.accesspdf.com/index.php?topic=pdftk

It's a DOS program, but not much work to build a VBA macro that runs it.

And it's free!

MT

> A long shot, maybe: Is there way, maybe using Shell, to print a PDF
> file from VBA code?
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> Thanks in advance
> Mark Tangard

Reply to this Message

jim - 12 Mar 2007 13:41 GMT

Mark -

Do a search on adobe.com for "Programming Acrobat JavaScript Using
Visual Basic". It is Tech Note #5417 published in August 2002. I
have used it to program some simple stuff with VB6 to save PDFs to
various directories based on content, something JavaScript is weak on
but that VB6 can do easily. The nice thing about it is that it is all
VB based and you don't need to go to DOS.

I am sure that will meet your needs.

jim

>In case anyone's interested, I found a nice one already:
>PDF Toolkit. http://www.accesspdf.com/index.php?topic=pdftk
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
>> Thanks in advance
>> Mark Tangard

Reply to this Message

Karl E. Peterson - 12 Mar 2007 22:39 GMT

> A long shot, maybe: Is there way, maybe using Shell, to print a PDF file from
> VBA code?
>
> Goal: To print all PDFs in a folder *in order* (alpha by filename), in a way
> that doesn't require opening each one or combining them into a large file(s).

I'd think you could do that with a series of ShellExecute calls using the "print"
verb. Try this:

Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" _
Alias "ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation _
As String, ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, _
ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long

Public Function PrintDoc(ByVal DocFile As String) As Long
' Uses the "print" verb as defined in the registry
PrintDoc = ShellExecute(0&, "print", DocFile, vbNullString, vbNullString,
vbNormalFocus)
End Function

Signature

.NET: It's About Trust!
http://vfred.mvps.org

Reply to this Message