control printing

[OverWorked]

I use Print Manager Plus 5.5. A few weeks ago it refused to print reports, and no longer gives users messages when their quotas are low or out. It gives a C++ runtime error if I try to get a report.

 

I emailed support Software Shelf but they say they no longer support v5.5!

They want £203 to upgrade to v6 + £137 for a maintenace contract.

 

Not impressed! - Before this happened I would have been happy to recommend it.

[penguinpowered]

The only time I have seen this is for IE where you can use a reg tweak to put a users name on the bottom of the page. Further investigation however found no such similar settings in office or anything like that.

 

Now you've got me interested! How do you do that?! 8O

[ChrisH]

I can find the particular reg settings at the moment but they relate to the codes under page setup and header and footer. You can do this in other browsers as well apparently.

[webman]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup\footer

 

A VBScript run at user logon could acquire the username & write it to the registry.

 

It might be possible to modify this key's security (once set to include the username) to read-only so they can't change it, not too sure how to achieve this though.

 

EDIT: Something like this:

 

Set net=WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set sh=WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
username=net.username
path="HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup\footer"
currentfooter=sh.RegRead(path)
If InStr(currentfooter,username) Then WScript.Quit
sh.RegWrite "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup\footer", "("&username&") "&currentfooter
Set net=Nothing
Set sh=Nothing

[ChrisH]

You dont need to grab the username there are different codes to use with the head and footer beggining with & . One is for username.

[webman]

You dont need to grab the username there are different codes to use with the head and footer beggining with & . One is for username.

 

I thought there might have been but the context help on that window doesn't tell you it. (Typical MS)

[Guest]

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")
strUser = objNetwork.UserName

Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = True
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add()

objDoc.Sections(1).Footers(1).Range.Text = strUser
objDoc.Sections(1).Footers(1).Range.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = 1

 

Will grab the logged on username, launch word, and create custom footer with username.

 

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")
strUser = objNetwork.computerName

Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = True
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add()

objDoc.Sections(1).Footers(1).Range.Text = strUser
objDoc.Sections(1).Footers(1).Range.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = 1

 

As above but will display computer name.

 

Only problem is the footer can still be edited by the user unless you can disable the editing of headers and footers of course.

[wesleyw]

If you just want a tool to report usage By Username, Printer etc.. you could do a lot worse than use Print Tracker 5.7 been using it here for a while. Needs to be installed on the server that holds the print queues and its one weakness is it connects to an MS Access Database but it only cost £50 I think. One of the guys here could probably write something similar in a few weeks/months but why go to all that trouble?

 

Wes

[tarquel]

wesleyw - price lol £50 I have no budget of £50 hehe

 

At the moment, I darent order anything lol

 

...although the SAV subscription is running out - £150

 

[and more but i dont wanna digree hehe]

 

And to really tax your brains (and I think I've asked this before but can't remember the answer...), is there any way of doing this when the printers do not run through a print server, but instead are hooked directly to the network?

 

An old post that I missed but I think PMP 5.5 does feature a way to do this - dont ask me what it is tho lol Good luck with finding it tho - i cant ask them as I have no maintainance contract with them these days :(

 

Nath

[OverWorked]

In case anyone's interested:

 

I got Print Manager Plus 5.5 working agian by reinstalling it. Works with no problems now. Don't know what caused it.

[RobC]

An old post that I missed but I think PMP 5.5 does feature a way to do this - dont ask me what it is tho lol Good luck with finding it tho - i cant ask them as I have no maintainance contract with them these days :(

 

Nath

 

Just had a look at the PMP 6 manual from their website, and it states that it cannot deal with printers connected directly to the network.

 

Surely it can't be that hard for a program to do this - I've got a trial of an Epson AcuLaser 2600 at the moment, and Epson's own JobTracker software can quite happily monitor printers that are connected directly to the network. The only drawback is that it only works with the Epson printers, so won't look at my Lexmark lasers.