Printing to a File
From: Fred Horvat (aa778@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Date: 01/08/93-07:48:09 PM Z
- Next message by date: Fred Horvat: "Transfering Data from the Portfolio to Atari 8-bit"
- Previous message by date: Fred Horvat: "Call Waiting"
- Return to Index: Sort by: [ date ] [ author ] [ thread ] [ subject ]
From: aa778@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Fred Horvat) Subject: Printing to a File Date: Fri Jan 8 19:48:09 1993 Have you ever needed to print a report to a file on the Portfolio? Why would you want to you may ask? There are times when you may need to print a report to a file. One example for me was when I had a spread sheet that printed about 200 characters wide and I only have a narrow carriage printer 80 characters normal 120 condensed. Well what I did was go into the Portfolio setup and selected Printer. Off the Printer option you get a new menu with three options Parallel, Serial, and File. Select File and press enter. A line will pop up and will ask you the path and name of the file that you wish to create. Example C:\TEST.PRN is what I keyed in you can call it anything you wish. I chose an extension of PRN you could use TXT, DOC or what ever you wish. When I went to print from the worksheet the output went to a file instead of a printer attached to the parallel port. I then transferred the file to my desktop PC. I used a shareware program called Sideways the prints a ASCII file landscaped (sideways). It is a slow process but after the four pages printed I cut them and taped them together to get my big spreadsheet. It may not be quick or pretty but it was the only way I could get the report printed. Since the report was 200 characters wide a wide carriage printer would not have worked anyway. What else is printing to a file good for? Well if you need to send some one a spread sheet via modem and they do not have a Lotus compatible program print it to a file first and then send them the ASCII file. Then all the have to do is print a ASCII file out. You could even fax the file from you desktop PC. You can even crunch the file to almost nothing since it's text and save a large amount of long distance connect time. You could upload the report to their E-mail. In other words the possibilities are almost endless! The Work sheet is not the only application that can print to a file. All applications built into the Portfolio can print to a file. Once you set the destination to a file then whenever you choose to print it will go to the file that you specified. This brings up a unique problem. What if print a spread sheet and then a memo from the Editor? Well the Portfolio will keep adding to the file that you specified in setup. This may or may not cause a problem. It is a bonus if you need to send a few reports. But you may end up with a mess of reports in the file. In other words be aware of what's going on and to delete the file when your down and you should be happy. This is just a quick overview on what you could do by printing to a file. Give it a try you just might like it. -- Fred Horvat aa778 Your Atari Portfolio SYGOP
- Next message by date: Fred Horvat: "Transfering Data from the Portfolio to Atari 8-bit"
- Previous message by date: Fred Horvat: "Call Waiting"
----------------------------------------- Return to message index