Programmatically supplying printer password from Access VBA

[Grinea]

Hi All,



I've have a database that generates and prints reports to a network printer, and that all works fine and dandy. The issue is the printer requires the user to enter a user code before it accepts the job. As I would like to print multiple reports from a single button it becomes tedious to enter the job code for every report. I've not managed to find anything on Google or forums referencing a way to supply the code to the printer programmatically, and doing print to PDF and then merge to have a single print job is quite unwieldy.

In short is there a way to supply a password/code as an argument with a print job with VBA?

Thanks for your time,
Owen

[ranman256]

never heard of a printer requiring a password.
If you are logged in, the printer KNOWS who you are. No need for a password.

[Micron]

I have. Anything I printed required me to enter a pass code after selecting which jobs from the queue belonged to me - IF my printer options were setup to require one. Can't recall what printer it was that would allow "Secure Print" settings to be set, but it was optional. So if I didn't configure to require a pass code it would print without delay. Maybe check your settings, or if it's an IT policy, you'd have to ask if you can be exempted. When you think of it, the idea of pass words kind of negates the idea of coding around them. If it were that easy, then why have them?

There is a printer object available in Access, but I've never dealt much with it so I don't know what properties you can get at.

[Grinea]

Thanks for the replies.

The printer requires a person's job code as each code has printing limits (total copies, colour, size, that sort of thing) as some of the people at my workplace were printing hundreds of copies of things for no or poor reasons.

Micron I understand what you mean about the passwords, but I was not intending to have them coded in, but rather prompt an input box to get a user to put in their print code, which would then be supplied to that series of reports. That way it only needs to be entered once. I don't think the user exemption would work as the reports often generate different information based on the user who has called them, so it will not be used just by myself. It is actually a good thought though, I'll check if the IT guys can put an exemption on jobs coming from Access, rather than jobs coming from a specific user. And I had no luck reading the documentation about the printer object unfortunately.

[Micron]

The printer requires a person's job code

Not clear to me what that means. My own experience is that passcodes had to be entered at the Xerox printer (or whatever it was) by the user. Kind of like putting in your code to unlock a door. The idea of doing that programmatically just doesn't seem possible.