Printer turned on? (XL2000)

[Thom Peterson]

I asked this long ago and I have still not found a way to check if the printer is on. I developed code for point of sale. I can use messages but some of the sales people don't pay attention. As the code progresses it will print, save the export information and clear the current sales receipt. Problem is if the printer isn't turned on the customer doesn't get a receipt.

I have looked in MSKB, and some API sites but have not found anything to check if the printer is on.

[unkamunka]

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IF it's a network printer, you could try pinging it with an API call. Haven't looked at this much but hope this helps.

[Cecil]

I have worked with printers in Access but not Excel, therefore I will point you to an Access resource.

MS Access 95 Developers Handbook (Sybex), Ch 10 - which I believe (it has been a couple of years, so my memory may be incorrect) was a free chapter on the MS Site. It may have been in the TechNet CD's, to which we subscribe.

When I put this together in 1998, I was writting to several of the devices properties and therefore delcared several UDTs, as defined in the book. I would think that if all you want to do is check to see if the printer is on, you could use apiOpenPrinter to check the status. You will need one UDT for this.

Type tagPrinterDefaults
pDatatype As String
pDevMode As Long
DesiredAccess As Long
End Type

The OpenPrinter may only interface with the MS Windows instance of the printer, not the physical printer. In this case, you would have to try writting something to the printer and then check for an error.

Sorry I cannot give you specifics since so much time has lapsed, but perhaps I have pointed you in the right direction. One thing I found for sure is that working with printers is not easy.

If you set the printer properties to print directly to the printer, as opposed to spooling, will you get an immediate error message back to your POS system?

[Hans Pottel]

I am not sure about this, but if you use Excel's VBA property

Application.ActivePrinter

this returns a string containing the name of the active printer with the connected port

e.g. HP Deskjet 930C on LPT1:

Use Instr to find 'on'. If no printer is connected, Instr will return 0. Of course, this is language dependent.

[Hans Pottel]

And of course, you can use API calls. Here is half of the solution to your problem: click here .

[Thom Peterson]

It is a local printer, no network.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will play with some of the code and see if I can identify the printer status.

Will let you know if anything works.