PrintDialog Box in VB.NET

A PrintDialog control is used to open the Windows Print Dialog and let user select the printer, set printer and paper properties and print a file.
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A PrintDialog control is used to open the Windows Print Dialog and let user select the printer, set printer and paper properties and print a file. A typical Open File Dialog looks like Figure 1 where you select a printer from available printers, set printer properties, set print range, number of pages and copies and so on. Clicking on OK button sends the document to the printer.

 

PrintDlgImg1.jpg
Figure 1

Creating a PrintDialog

We can create a PrintDialog at design-time as well as at run-time.

Design-time

To create a PrintDialog control at design-time, you simply drag and drop a PrintDialog control from Toolbox to a Form in Visual Studio. After you drag and drop a PrintDialog on a Form, the PrintDialog looks like Figure 2.

 

PrintDlgImg2.jpg
Figure 2

Run-time

Creating a PrintDialog control at run-time is simple. First step is to create an instance of PrintDialog class and then call the ShowDialog method. The following code snippet creates a PrintDialog control.

Dim PrintDialog1 As New PrintDialog()

PrintDialog1.ShowDialog()
 

Printing Documents

PrintDocument object represents a document to be printed. Once a PrintDocument is created, we can set the Document property of PrintDialog as this document. After that we can also set other properties.  The following code snippet creates a PrintDialog and sends some text to a printer.

Imports System.Drawing.Printing

 

Public Class Form1

 

    Private Sub PrintButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles PrintButton.Click

        Dim printDlg As New PrintDialog()

 

        Dim printDoc As  New PrintDocument()

        printDoc.DocumentName = "Print Document"

        printDlg.Document = printDoc

        printDlg.AllowSelection = True

        printDlg.AllowSomePages = True

 

        If (printDlg.ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK) Then

            printDoc.Print()

        End If

 

    End Sub

End Class

   

Summary

A PrintDialog control allows users to launch Windows Open File Dialog and select a file to be printed. In this article, we discussed how to use a Windows Open File Dialog and set its properties in a Windows Forms application.

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