Common Dialog Control doesnt allow orientation from Landscape to Portrait programmatically

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From: Daniel (daniel.noack_at_bluearrow.co.uk)
Date: 04/27/04 

Date: 27 Apr 2004 08:17:47 -0700

Hi there,
I am having a big problem with the Common Dialog control being used in
a Windows app developed using VB6 SP6 running on XP and 98.
When trying to print using the common dialog and set the common
dialog's orientation property I have noticed that it doesnt seem to
allow you to set it from Landscape to portrait from within code. I
mean you can set the Orientation property from 2 to 1 and see it has
changed in the code but as soon as the ShowPrinter method is called it
has gone back to Landscape which was the default setting on the
printer originally. Portrait to Landscape works fine but for some
reason it just wont allow the other way around. I am trying to set the
orientation before the dialog is displayed to the user after I have
already determined what the orientation is for the doc they are
printing.
I use
cdPrint.Orientation = cdlPortrait
cdprint.ShowPrinter

but when it gets displayed using the ShowPrinter call it always takes
the default printers setting and fails to modify it before its
displayed in the Common Dialog unless the default setting for the
printer was portrait and then it allows the change to landscape using

cdPrint.Orientation = cdlLandscape
cdprint.ShowPrinter

I have tried to get around it by using the Printer object but found
that it does not hold a real time reference to the actual printer,
meaning that changes to the Printer object dont seem to be immediately
seen in the default windows printer.
I have both Printer.TrackDefault and cdPrint.PrinterDefault set to
true, the changes seem to work fine only going from Portrait to
Landscape but not Landscape to Portrait.

If anyone has experienced this problem before or may have a clue about
it then I would be thankful for any help as I have spent quite awhile
on this now and it just seems to be a bug I dont know how to get
around.
Please Help me...

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