Re: Print file question

In the Bad Old Days when everybody had their printers attached to
serial port COM1: (have you ever heard of that?), you could use the
DOS command

COPY /b myfile.prn COM1:

to copy the binary file (that's the meaning of the /b switch) from
disk to the serial port. Some printers used a parallel port, so you
would use LPT1: instead of COM1: in the command.

I've never seen an equivalent for a USB-connected printer, since DOS
predated USB and the pseudo-DOS command processor in Windows doesn't
recognize USB as a destination for the COPY command. If you scrounge
around the freeware/shareware web sites, you might find a program that
does some magic to make it work.

Failing that, .prn files are pretty useless. If you can get the
document that was used to make your .prn file, just print it normally.
Or ask for a PDF version, which you can print from Adobe Reader.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 14:28:01 -0700, Harvey
<Harvey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks Jay,
What do you exactly mean by "file-copy in binary mode" ? I thought with
using .prn files we can move printable files from computer to computer and
print it with the same printer. If we can't print the actual document with a
.prn file so what is the usage of this type of files?
thanks:)

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

A .prn file is a capture of the data that would normally be sent directly to
the printer, telling it which dots to print. It's specific to the particular
printer (or printer driver) that was selected when the file was created.
There's no way to get Word to print anything intelligible from it. All you
can do is file-copy it in binary mode to the printer (and even that may be
hard to do, if you have a USB printer instead of a parallel-port printer).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Harvey wrote:
Hi everyone,
I have a print file( .prn) that i want to print it but when i open it
with word it shows several pages of numbers and when I print it it
prints the same numbers insted of printing the actual document which
is only one page long. Any idea about how can i fix this?
Thanks:)



.

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