Snagging data being sent to parallel printer

[RussAuto]

I'm looking for a solution to a specific problem, and I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

My situation: I am running a dos-based point of sale system. There is info which is captured at the time of sale and sent to my parallel printer, which is then lost ... seemingly forever. I would like to find a way to have either the program or dos or the printer send the info to excel. I don't care if it sits in a .csv file or something and has to be manually manipated in order to get excel to figure it out.

Is there a way to capture the data on the way to the printer, and shoot a copy to excel? Or send it from the printer to excel? Or, yikes, send it to a scanner to create a .pdf and then to a reader to read it back to something excel can deal with?

I could likely get permission to write a file or report in the dos program. But the owners will not write it for me and they don't think I will find anyone who can.

Ugh. It's very old school ... but surely there's a way?

 

[Fluff]

This has nothing to do with Xl. You would almost certainly need to do something with the POS system itself.

 

[Macropod]

I suggest you do a web search on something like:
vba intercept lpt1

 

[TotallyConfused]

Hello RussAuto
It's been so many years since I worked with DOS that I've forgotten a lot and I no longer have any DOS textbooks. I did a Google search for 'Redirect lpt1 to a text file' and came up with the following links. I haven't followed it any further, but this may give you a start in the right direction. Good luck.

I don't know if something like this in the DOS command prompt line would work or not: LPT1 >> C:\filename.txt

Redirect lpt1 to a txt file

Hello, i have an old dos program that only prints to serial and lpt ports. I need to have the output endup in a simple text file. There used to be away in dos to redirect lpt1 to a file.

forums.tomshardware.com

or perhaps: how to print to text file-dos program

TotallyConfused