Watermark Printing Problem

T

Ted P.

I am using MS-Access2000 with SP-3 installed. My operating
system is Windows98 SE with all patches applied. I have an
application that has been working for over a year without
problems. This application uses preprinted vendor order
forms. The application prints MS-Access visual objects of
type label, textbox, and checkbox onto the preprinted
forms that have been inserted into a HP laser printer
through a single sheet feeder.

My customer would ultimately like to be able to fax these
order forms directly from their computer using WinFaxPro
fax server. Even without doing that, it would be a big
improvement in the efficiency of their operation if the
computer would print out the vendor order form image as a
very dark watermark with the visual data objects filled in
by using a scanned copy of the vendor order forms saved as
a BMP file.

I have scanned 3 of the vendor order forms and resized
them for printing on an 8.5" by 11" paper in landscape
orientation without MS-Access doing any resizing to make
the image fit the paper. I can print the BMP files to a HP
laser printer using MS-Paint and other graphic image
editing programs like Graphic Workshop and the Kodak image
editor that came with MS Windows 2000 Professional
operating system. The Kodak image editor shows at the
bottom of the frame the percentage resize it had to do to
display the image inside of the frame. The image is at
100% or 97% or something like that when the Kodak image
editor is maxed on the desktop of my Windows2000Pro
computer. That is where I have my scanner hooked up.

My first attempt at assigning a BMP file to the picture
property of an MS-Access report (linked) worked
(yippee..!!) without any problems but my second attempt
has a problem. The report that worked has a page header
and footer which is needed by the way the vendor order
form is layed out. All the preprinted vendor order forms
have at least a page header and some have a page footer. I
can't afford to give up that functionality.

The problem I am having with the 2nd report is that the
BMP file image appears just fine in print preview, but it
does not print on the paper. All of my attempts to
discover a fix for this situation thus far have not been
successful. I can open both reports in Design mode and
tile them inside of the MS-Access frame. Using this setup,
I can open the property sheet and toggle back and forth
between them and compare the value of all the properties
of the two reports including the property values for the
page header, detail, and page footer sections. I can also
make this same comparison using the results of analyzing
the two report objects. All the properties of the two
reports are the same except for those that have a numeric
value like Height or Width.

An experiment I performed to prove that the BMP image file
is not the problem is that I assigned the BMP file of the
failing report to the picture property of the working
report. The BMP file of the failing report printed OK when
I did this. The data was all goobered up because the
visual data objects of the working report did not fit the
watermark image from the failing report; but everything
printed OK.

Does anybody have a clue why this is happening this way..??

Ted Palmer
tedpalmer(getTHISottahere)@tlp.bestdsl<do#%&+t>net
 

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