WhiteBoard Coder: Visual Studio 2012 C# Print more than one page

I have a need to print out some documents programmatically using .Net and C#. Here are my notes on how to get basic printing working in C#.

This document just goes over printing on more than one page

Set up a Virtual Printer

Before I starting writing this program I downloaded and installed a virtual printer. In the past I have used a CUPS printer on my Mac but for this time around I looked around for something to run directly on my Windows 7 machine. I found CutePDF at http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp [1]

I installed this virtual server so I could test my printing without using up so much paper.

Before I go into my instructions there is a good YouTube video that goes over how to do basic printing in visual studio, using Visual basic.

http://youtu.be/m8Hz69jnae8 [2] It's not to hard to use this video to figure out how to do it in C#

Create a basic Windows Form Application

From Visual Studio 2012 Professional click on New project (or from the menu select File --> New --> Project

Select Windows Forms Application
I named mine PrintDocumentWithMultiplePagesTestApp
Click OK

Add a button to the program, I updated the button's text to "Print"

From the ToolBox search for print. The two print tools that will be used for this simple tutorial are PrintDocument and PrintPreviewDialog.

Drag and drop one PrintPrevieDialog and One PrintDocument tool to the Form. They will show up on the bottom of the design window.

Double click on PrintDocument1

This will open the code were you can define how the document will be printed.

Microsoft has a good page explaining how the PrintPageEvent works to print more than one page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.drawing.printing.printdocument.printpage.aspx [3]

Basically you need to use the PrintPageEventArgs HasMorePages value. If you set this to true the print event will be called again until it is set to false

Here is the code I wrote for the document creation

public partial class Form1 : Form {

private int currentPage = 1;

public Form1() {

InitializeComponent();

}

private void printDocument1_PrintPage(object sender,

System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs e) {

Graphics g = e.Graphics;

Font font = new Font("Microsoft Sans Serif", 24F,

System.Drawing.FontStyle.Bold,

System.Drawing.GraphicsUnit.Point,

((byte)(0)));

if (this.currentPage == 1) {

g.DrawString("First Page", font,

System.Drawing.Brushes.Black, 100, 50);

this.currentPage++;

e.HasMorePages = true;

}

else if (this.currentPage == 2) {

g.DrawString("Second Page", font,

System.Drawing.Brushes.Red, 100, 50);

this.currentPage = 1;

e.HasMorePages = false;

}

This will Document will draw the string "First Page" on the first page then call the print page event again and print the second page with "Second Page" on it.

Now this document is ready to print but it needs to actually be printed.

Double Click on the Button to create the Button click event for this button

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {

printPreviewDialog1.Document = printDocument1;

printPreviewDialog1.ShowDialog();

this.currentPage = 1;

}

This code will assign the printDocument1 to the printPreviewDialog1 and open it in a dialog.

Test it

Click Start and run the program

Click print

This is the PrintPreviewDialog. It’s a basic print preview tool. You can feed it a PrintDocument and it will display it and give you some basic tools to zoom, go through pages, and print it.