PrintPreviewDialog control display the Print Preview Dialog with all buttons and settings where users can change their settings before a document goes to the printer. But there are circumstances when you would need to just display print preview without any buttons and options and use can only see the preview. This is where the PrintPreviewControl comes in picture.
PrintPreviewControl control represents the raw part of print preview of a document that is ready go to the printer. In this article, I will discuss how to use a PrintPreviewControl control to display print previews of documents in Windows Forms applications.
Creating a PrintPreviewControl
PrintPreviewControl is defined in the System.Drawing.Printing namespace. You must import this namespace before using the PrintPreviewControl class.
We can create a PrintPreviewControl by dragging the control from Toolbox onto a Form or we can use the PrintPreviewControl class.
The following code snippet creates a PrintPreviewControl, sets its properties and adds control to the Form by calling Controls.Add() method.
C# Code:
private
PrintPreviewControl
ppc;
private
PrintDocument
docToPrint =
new
PrintDocument
();
private
void
CreatePrintPreviewControl()
ppc =
new
PrintPreviewControl
();
ppc.Name =
"PrintPreviewControl1"
;
ppc.Dock =
DockStyle
.Fill;
ppc.Location =
new
Point
(88, 80);
ppc.Document = docToPrint;
ppc.Zoom = 0.25;
ppc.Document.DocumentName =
"
c:\\
"
;
ppc.UseAntiAlias =
true
;
// Add PrintPreviewControl to Form
Controls.Add(
this
.ppc);
VB.NET Code:
Private
Sub
CreatePrintPreviewControl()
ppc =
New
PrintPreviewControl
()
ppc.Name =
"PrintPreviewControl1"
ppc.Dock =
DockStyle
.Fill
ppc.Location =
New
Point
(88, 80)
ppc.Document = docToPrint
ppc.Zoom = 0.25
ppc.Document.DocumentName =
"c:\"
ppc.UseAntiAlias =
True
AddHandler
docToPrint.PrintPage,
AddressOf
PrintPage
' Add PrintPreviewControl to Form
Controls.Add(ppc)
End
Sub
Adding PrintDocument.PrintPage Event Handler
Remember, a PrintPreviewControl displays preview only and do not print a document. To print a document, we must implement PrintDocument.PrintPage event handler.
The following code snippet add PrintDocument.PrintPage event handler and prints some text using the DrawString method of Graphics object.
C# Code:
// Add PrintDocument PrintPage event handler
this
.docToPrint.PrintPage +=
new
System.Drawing.Printing.
PrintPageEventHandler
(PrintPage);
private
void
PrintPage(
object
sender,
PrintPageEventArgs
e)
string
text =
"This text to be printed. "
;
e.Graphics.DrawString(text,
new
Font
(
"Georgia"
, 35,
FontStyle
.Bold),
Brushes
.Black, 10, 10);
VB.NET Code:
AddHandler
docToPrint.PrintPage,
AddressOf
PrintPage
Private
Sub
PrintPage(
ByVal
sender
As
Object
,
ByVal
e
As
PrintPageEventArgs
)
Dim
text
As
String
=
"This text to be printed. "
e.Graphics.DrawString(text,
New
Font
(
"Georgia"
, 35,
FontStyle
.Bold),
Brushes
.Black, 10, 10)
End
Sub
The output looks like Figure 1 where the print preview of a document to be printed is displayed.
Summary
