PrintPreviewControl In C#

Mahesh Chand

C#PrintPreviewControlPrint Preview Control

10 Comments

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rohini Raj6y ago
Can we use mouse events inside this, like zoom in and zoom out of the preview on mouse left and right-click
anurag nagar7y ago
Very helpful article, some additional guidance required on it I have added numericUpDown for top and left margin it works first time but preview is not refreshing after changing data in numericUPDown and button_click
Sagar Pandurang Kap9y ago
Good for loading big files instead first preview about them.Helpful.
Ali Ahmed9y ago
How can i only preview the text i want to print not the whole page? Is it possible
- Mahesh Chand9y ago
  If you look at a link at the bottom, Print a Text File. Click on that and in the method, rather than loading a text file, you can simply load Text in code.
- Ali Ahmed9y ago
  Thank you very much for your reply. But that is not what i am asking. I want to remove that gray bg in printpreviewcontrol or dialog and preview only the page in printpreviewcontrol.
Sharmila Meena11y ago
i just want to view the uploaded file without download using c#
Varinder Rai15y agoedited
hello Sir, I have following problem Print Previews DefaultPageSettings.Landscape =true is not working Even after setting true it is showing preview in Portrait . Please help me how can i achieve this. thanks.
sagar bhatt15y ago
Mahesh,Great article... I have one query regarding this... If we have .doc or .pdf format file then how can we show in print preview control ? Thanks in advance...
Ankit Nandekar15y ago
great article

The PrintPreviewDialog control displays the Print Preview Dialog with all buttons and settings so the users can change their settings before a document goes to the printer. But there are circumstances when you would need to just display print preview without any buttons and options and show only the preview. This is where the PrintPreviewControl can be used.

The PrintPreviewControl control represents the raw part of print preview of a document that is ready go to the printer. In this article, I will discuss how to use a PrintPreviewControl control to display print previews of documents in Windows Forms applications.

Creating a PrintPreviewControl

PrintPreviewControl is defined in the System.Drawing.Printing namespace. You must import this namespace before using the PrintPreviewControl class.

We can create a PrintPreviewControl by dragging the control from the Toolbox onto a Form or we can use the PrintPreviewControl class.

The following code snippet creates a PrintPreviewControl, sets it's properties and adds control to the Form by calling Controls.Add() method.

C# Code

private PrintPreviewControl ppc;
private PrintDocument docToPrint = new PrintDocument();
private void CreatePrintPreviewControl()
{
ppc = new PrintPreviewControl();
ppc.Name = "PrintPreviewControl1";
ppc.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
ppc.Location = new Point(88, 80);
ppc.Document = docToPrint;
ppc.Zoom = 0.25;
ppc.Document.DocumentName = "c:\\";
ppc.UseAntiAlias = true;
// Add PrintPreviewControl to Form
Controls.Add(this.ppc);
}

Adding the PrintDocument.PrintPage Event Handler

Remember, a PrintPreviewControl displays preview only and does not print a document. To print a document, we must implement the PrintDocument.PrintPage event handler. The following code snippet adds a PrintDocument.PrintPage event handler and prints some text using the DrawString method of the Graphics object.

C# Code

// Add PrintDocument PrintPage event handler
this.docToPrint.PrintPage +=
new System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventHandler(PrintPage);
private void PrintPage(object sender, PrintPageEventArgs e)
{
string text = "This text to be printed. ";
e.Graphics.DrawString(text, new Font("Georgia", 35, FontStyle.Bold),
Brushes.Black, 10, 10);
}

The output looks like Figure 1 where the print preview of a document to be printed is displayed.

Summary

In this article, we discussed how to use a PrintPreviewControl control to display print preview of documents in Windows Forms applications. Download the attached project to learn more about this control.

Further Readings

Here is a list of top articles and tutorials about printing you will want to read to learn more about printing.

Printing Directly to the Printer by john donell on Jan 04, 2006
Printing Invoices using C# and .NET by Mike Gold on Jan 04, 2006
Printing a Ruler using C# and GDI+ by Mike Gold on Jan 04, 2006
Printing out your W2 Form using C# and .NET by Mike Gold on Jan 04, 2006
Notepad.NET - Printing a multiline textbox in C# and .NET by Mike Gold on Aug 29, 2006
How To: Printing Form Controls in C# and .NET by Mike Gold on Aug 30, 2006
How To Print a Data Grid in C# and .NET by Mike Gold on Aug 30, 2006
Print a Text File in C# by Mahesh Chand on Jun 06, 2007
Printing in C# by Mike Gold on Feb 28, 2010
PrintDialog in C#