Print a Document

Printing in a Windows Forms application with TX Text Control uses the printing of .NET: the standard print dialog, the print preview, and a PrintDocument for printing without asking the user. The button handlers below print the document of the editor in each of these ways, print a file the editor never shows, and explain why the formatting printer matters for what comes out of the printer.

Prerequisites

• The application from Create Your First Windows Forms Application, with a TextControl named textControl1 on Form1.
• For each section, a Button on the form. Double-click it in the designer to create its Click handler.
• A printer. The examples print to Microsoft Print to PDF, which Windows provides. Replace its name with the name of your printer.

Form1.cs needs these using directives:

using System.Drawing.Printing;
using TXTextControl;

Print With the Print Dialog

private void printButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!textControl1.CanPrint)
    {
        MessageBox.Show("This document cannot be printed.");
        return;
    }

    // Open the print dialog. The name identifies the print job.
    textControl1.Print("My Document");
}

• Print with a document name opens the standard print dialog, in which the user selects the printer and the pages, and then prints the document.
• CanPrint tells whether the document may be printed. A protected document can forbid printing.

Show a Print Preview

private void previewButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    textControl1.PrintPreview("My Document");
}

PrintPreview shows a preview of the current document. Another overload takes a PrintDocument and shows the preview with its settings.

Print Without a Dialog

A PrintDocument of .NET carries the settings a print job needs. Pass it to Print, and TX Text Control prints with these settings, without asking the user:

private void quickPrintButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    PrintDocument printDocument = new PrintDocument();

    printDocument.DocumentName = "My Document";
    printDocument.PrinterSettings.PrinterName = "Microsoft Print to PDF";
    printDocument.PrinterSettings.Copies = 2;

    // Print pages 1 to 2 only. PrintRange must be SomePages.
    printDocument.PrinterSettings.PrintRange = PrintRange.SomePages;
    printDocument.PrinterSettings.FromPage = 1;
    printDocument.PrinterSettings.ToPage = Math.Min(2, textControl1.Pages);

    // Suppress the "Page n of document" status dialog
    printDocument.PrintController = new StandardPrintController();

    textControl1.Print(printDocument);
}

The code works as follows:

• TX Text Control uses the document name, the print controller and the printer settings of the PrintDocument. The Print Methods lists the settings it reads.
• A page range takes effect only with PrintRange set to PrintRange.SomePages. Pages returns the number of pages of the document.
• .NET shows a status dialog with the page being printed. A StandardPrintController prints without it.

Print a File Without the Editor

A ServerTextControl loads and prints a document without showing it. It has no print dialog, so it always prints with a PrintDocument:

private void printFileButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    using (ServerTextControl tx = new ServerTextControl())
    {
        // Initialize the new instance before using it
        tx.Create();
        tx.Load("document.docx", StreamType.WordprocessingML);

        PrintDocument printDocument = new PrintDocument();
        printDocument.DocumentName = "document.docx";
        printDocument.PrinterSettings.PrinterName = "Microsoft Print to PDF";

        tx.Print(printDocument);
    }
}

ServerTextControl.Print uses the same settings of the PrintDocument as the editor.

Format the Document for the Printer

TX Text Control formats a document with the text dimensions of a printer, so that lines and pages break on the screen exactly as on paper. FormattingPrinter names that printer:

private void formatForPrinterButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Line and page breaks now match this printer
    textControl1.FormattingPrinter = "Microsoft Print to PDF";
}

The values Standard and Display and what happens with a printer that is not installed are described in Print Exactly What the Screen Shows.

Next Steps

• Printing and Print Preview: printing from the editor in detail, including single pages.
• Printing: printing in code, batch printing and background output.
• Save as DOCX and PDF: save the document instead of printing it.
• The blog article Print MS Word DOCX Documents in .NET using C# Without Interop: printing DOCX files with ServerTextControl.