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How to print to PDF using GC Chemstation B.01.01, need macro

Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:20 pm
by bonaparte
I have been tasked with converting our current Agilent GC Chemstation to going paperless. This is to be done by having our reports printed to .PDF.

I have installed pdfFactory, which will print our reports as our autosampler runs, however the reports come out with the date and time as the name, which makes it very confusing as to which report belongs to who, or to which project they are working on.

Is there any way to print to PDF which will use the name of the data file as the name of the PDF file? The goal is to do this as a sequence runs so that the PDF filenames will correspond to who and what project it belongs to.

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:21 am
by Csaba
Hi,
I hope this helps: We are using pdffactory v2.10, and that old version keeps the original filenames. So I believe it is some option in a newer version so pdffactory can change the pdf file name.
If you cna't find the option setting, contact the vendor for help.

Regards
Csaba

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 1:24 pm
by bonaparte
No, it's not the result of pdffactory. The name is sent by the chemstation software to pdffactory.

I think I might be able to use AutoHotKeys to write a work around where the pdf file created is renamed to match the name of the last created datafile folder. That should solve the problem if I can figure it out.

I will try checking the "keep origional filenames box" though.

Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 6:28 pm
by kevink
bonaparte,

We are currently using pdf creator and all of our reports print to pdf. I control the report name by setting it to the _dataname$ variable which is the sample name in your sequence table.

PDF creator uses a <title> function that correlates to the startjob command in the chemstation. For example "startjob _dataname$" would name your job whatever is in your sample section of your sample table. You would use the command "endjob" at each point you wanted the chemstation to print the document. These commands are also used with the startprint and endprint commands.

Hope this helps.

Kevin