Windows printer to approve before printing

[djreiswig]

This question is not Excel related in any way, but I thought there might be a possibility that someone on this forum might be able to lead me in the right direction.

Basically what I am looking for is a way to intercept things going to a printer and only print the jobs that I want. The background behind this question is that we have a program that as part of its operation prints labels. The problem is that I only want to print certain labels. Each label is a separate print job on a zebra(?) printer. I am looking for a way to be able to approve each label before it is sent to the printer and then decide whether I want to print it or not. Something like a print preview with an OK/Cancel option would be nice. Or just the OK/Cancel as I have another display in the program that will let me know what the label will say.

I'm imagining a windows printer that I can choose in our program that will accept the print jobs, and then has a setting for the label printer where the labels will be sent if they are approved to be printed.

Any ideas?

 

[Macropod]

Hi djreiswig,

Unless your existing software has the functionality you require, what you're after is unlikely to be available in the form of an application that can intercept print jobs.

On the other hand, if you were to use an application like MS Word to run a mailmerge (via either a standard lable merge or via a vba-driven merge process), you could interactively choose which label data to incorporate into the mailmerge output.

 

[shg]

I second Macropod's suggestion to use MailMerge. It includes the ability to use a separate column as a filter.

 

[djreiswig]

Can't use a different application. The program we use is a large database program and performs many operations, the label printing being just one of them.

I found this:
http://www.printingmonitor.com/default.aspx?key=11051146
but it won't let me interrupt all printing. Only jobs over so many pages or once so many pages have been printed in total. I contacted the author to see if he would be interested in modifying the program for me.

It sounds like it uses the Windows Print Manager to pause the printer and give you a chance to cancel the print job. Exactly what I need to do. I couldn't find any other program that seemed to do this.

 

[shg]

How about instead modifying the 'large database program' to print only the labels you want?

 

[djreiswig]

It is a large commercial program, so I don't have any way to modify it.

I need to capture the labels after they are printed and either allow them to print or cancel them.

 

[shg]

Final suggestion: Change the active printer to PDF (or print to a PRN file), and then decide what to print later.

 

[djreiswig]

Sorry, can't do that either. Have to apply the labels to products as they are printed. Each one is unique. It is just that some of the products don't need the labels and I can't tell the program what products don't need the labels. The program prints a label automatically after I scan an item over an antenna, and it tells me what to do with that item. I need to put labels on some of the items, but not others. The majority of the items don't get labels, so I can't just print them and not use them.

Is there a better forum more suited to this type of question? I didn't know where to post. Since I have been on this forum for quite a while, I thought I'd try here. I'm guessing this is kind of an odd problem.

 

[shg]

I have no further suggestion, but someone else may.

As to another forum, perhaps one for Windows.

 

[djreiswig]

shg and Macropod, thanks for the ideas. Hopefully someone else will be able to help me with this.