How to change print settings for Internet Explorer and the WebBrowser control programmatically in Internet Explorer (236777)

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

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Users can easily change page margins, header and footer settings, and the default Internet Explorer printer through the Internet Explorer user interface. However, there are no methods under Internet Explorer or the WebBrowser control to change these settings programmatically.

You cannot use the ExecWB command to set page margins and the header or footer. These values are stored in the registry.

There might be a need to change the print settings of Internet Explorer or the WebBrowser control programmatically. The only settings that can be changed are page margins, and header and footer information. There is no supported way to change other settings like page orientation or printer.

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

This is how Microsoft Internet Explorer accesses the printing settings:

For Page Margins, Microsoft Internet Explorer first tries to get the values from this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup

If there is no such a key, Internet Explorer create this key by copying the values from the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup

If there is no such key, default values are provided.

For the Header and Footer, the values are picked up from the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup

If there is no such key, default values are provided.

The defaults are 0.75 for margins,

For the Internet Explorer default printer, default values are provided from:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup\printer

The developer could alter the above registry entries for the printing settings accordingly.

Please note that these values are system-wide and affect all instances of the WebBrowser control and Internet Explorer for the current user.

REFERENCES

For a Microsoft Visual Basic .NET version of this article, see 311280.

For additional information, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

145679 How To Use the Registry API to Save and Retrieve Setting

156732 How To Print from the Microsoft WebBrowser Control

176400 How To Print the WebBrowser Control

188271 How To Print Contents of the Web Browser Control From VB

256898 Default Printer for Internet Explorer or Outlook Express May Be Incorrect

For additional information, visit the following Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site:

Web development

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anch_webdev.asp

How to change print settings for Internet Explorer and the WebBrowser control programmatically in Internet Explorer (236777)

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