Family Historian User Group

Printing not as show on the print preview
The problem only arises if you are printing on a printer that is not your default printer. That is to say, when you go to print, you have to select the printer from the drop down list because the one you want isn't the one that is already selected. What I believe is happening is that Family Historian is (correctly) basing its layout (in good WYSIWYG style) on the characteristics of the current printer. But when you print, you are (I suspect) changing the 'current printer' at the last moment, by selecting another one from the printer list. What should happen is that F.H. should immediately refresh all its printer information accordingly before printing. But it isn't doing that. Instead, it is using characteristics of the wrong printer with the results that you have seen.

The solution is easy. Either:

(1) Make the printer you want to use the default printer. To do this, close F.H. (or at least close all Reports Windows and Diagram Windows). Then go to the Printers area in your version of Windows, right-click on the printer that should be the default and click on 'Set as Default Printer'. (It may work slightly differently in different versions of Windows, but something along those lines will work on all versions of Windows). Thereafter (in all applications) this printer will be the one that is already selected in the printer list, whenever you go to print anything.

Alternatively, if you don't want to change your default printer:

(2) When you start F.H., before opening either the Reports Window or Diagrams Window (or after closing them, if they were already open), click on 'Print Setup' and select the printer you want. Press OK. Now when you open either the Reports Window or the Diagrams Window, the printer you want will already be 'current' (this doesn't make it the default printer - just the currently selected one for this session of F.H.), and everything should work correctly.

Please note: anyone who occasionally prints to a non-default printer (e.g. a PDF driver like PDF995 - not a real printer but the same principle applies) should probably be aware of this issue. In that case, using method (2) would be advisable until the problem is fixed in the next release.

My apologies for all the inconvenience caused by this.

Simon Orde
List Administrator & Family Historian designer

Just got FH today and installed the update. I also get the same problem on the print preview. All the messages in the dialogue boxes only hold the incorrect text something like ??(P).. ?????(N).. etc.
I've only got 1 printer on my PC and so this is the defualt. I can email a screen shot of the problem if needed. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards

John

We have the same. Printing can feel like an act of faith. By scouring the manual, we have discovered how to handle the printing of diagrams - however, when printing standard reports 'descendants of ...' or whatever, we find that what looks like a complete page (or two) in print preview comes out as a bit of page one in huge type. Our solution has been to use options to reduce the size of the manin heading ... everything seems to flow from that ...
We don't mind editing output to fit the page - that's normal - but print preview really should show what is about to be printed ...

Right, that's off our chests ... otherwise just love FH ...

Have you set your main printer as default?

Hi,
I also found that I didn't have a margin to enable me to properly file various reports - The page setup was greyed out and I haven't yet discovered how to liven it up. I would like to be able to set the margins if possible ?
Chris

are in the report options, print set up tab.

Hi,

Hi,
I suspect there is more than one Chris as my Computer crashed on 18th May 04 and went back to the Guy that produced it. (According to my records)
Chris