Issues With Printing GridView

[Neil N]

We need to print a GridView and are implementing the code found in "GridView | Print and Print Preview" example in the WPF Desktop Examples 2024 Q4  app but are encountering two issues also present in the Telerik-provided example.

1) Changes made in Print Preview are not carried over when the Print button is pressed.  For example, if you change to Landscape/Legal in Print Preview, this will revert back to Portrait/Letter when Print is clicked.

2) Clicking Print on the Print Preview window shoves the Print Preview window to the background and if Cancel is clicked on the Print window, the user has to Alt-Tab through windows to find the Print Preview window to close it.

[Stenly]

Hello Neil,

The observed behavior regarding the first part of your message is expected. Generally, the "GridView | Print and Print Preview" example contains two buttons that showcase the two printing options of the RadSpreadsheet control. The Print button executes the Print method of the RadSpreadsheet control, whereas the Print Preview button utilizes the Print Preview functionality, which allows you to customize the sheets prior to exporting them via the Print button in the top-left corner of the dialog (not the one above the Print Preview button). 

About the second question, the created RadWindow element that hosts the PrintPreviewControl in the mentioned example does not have its IsTopMost property set. To change this, navigate to the CreatePreviewWindow method in the PrintAndPrintPreviewExtensions class and set the IsTopMost property of the created RadWindow to True. This way, the window will stay on top of the screen.

If the top-most approach is not desired, you could utilize the RadWindowInteropHelper.SetShowInTaskBar method, to display the RadWindow in the taskbar. This way, the user can view it in the taskbar and close it, instead of using the ALT + Tab key combination to navigate to it.

The following code snippet showcases the implementation for both of these suggestions regarding the second question:

private static RadWindow CreatePreviewWindow(FrameworkElement previewControl)
{
    Grid grid = new Grid();
    grid.RowDefinitions.Add(new RowDefinition());
    grid.Children.Add(previewControl);

    Grid.SetRow(previewControl, 0);

    RadWindow window = new RadWindow()
    {
        //Set IsTopmost
        //IsTopmost = true,
        Content = grid,
        Width = 900,
        Height = 670,
        Header = "Print Preview",
        WindowStartupLocation = WindowStartupLocation.CenterScreen
    };

    //Utilize the RadWindowInteropHelper.SetShowInTaskbar method
    //RadWindowInteropHelper.SetShowInTaskbar(window, true);

    return window;
}

With this being said, I hope the provided information will be of help to you.

Regards,
Stenly
Progress Telerik

[Neil N]

Hi Stenly,

I am clicking the Print button in the top-left corner of the dialog. The changed settings are not carried over.

 

 

 

[Stenly]

Hello Neil,

I tested the example with these steps, however, I was unable to reproduce this behavior. I tested it on a machine with a Windows 10 OS.

With this in mind, I also tested this on a Windows 11 machine and I was able to reproduce this behavior. I will need a bit more time to further review this scenario.

[Neil N]

Thanks, Stenly. I look forward to hearing your findings.

[Stenly]

Hello Neil,

I further tested this scenario on a Windows 11 machine, and it seems that this is an issue stemming from the .NET framework.

More specifically, internally, we open a new native WPF PrintDialog when clicking the Print button in the Print Preview dialog. The configured customizations in the Print Preview dialog are examined, and the PrintTicket property of the WPF PrintDialog is modified based on them. This produces the expected result when working with the Windows 10 OS version, however, there seems to be an issue when this logic is executed on the Windows 11 OS version.

This behavior is discussed in the following GitHub issue, which is still not resolved:

Print Dialog Settings in Windows 11 22H2 Not Honored · Issue #8355 · dotnet/wpf

With this being said, I hope the provided information will be of help to you. I also looked for a possible workaround, however, I was unable to come up with one.