I’ve got an incredibly specific question that I need input on and I’d much obliged to all you tech-dopers for any assistance.
Once a day, every day, I need to print out a specific portion of a PDF that gets published online, with certain settings for zoom, landscape mode and a few other things. This is fiddly and somewhat time-consuming to set up just right and I’m a lazy bum, so I’m trying to automate it to some form of macro.
I’m guessing this could probably be accomplished in VB, but I’ve got only accidental exposure to it and would greatly appreciate some pointers. Oh, and I don’t have admin access to the computer in question.
Here’s what, ideally, the macro would accomplish:
(The below is when the PDF is opened in the Acrobat Reader plugin in Internet Explorer.)
Open PDF from URL. (URL is a constant)
Zoom 124%
Select area (Area is a constant and can probably be defined by coordinates, if that’s possible.)
Open print menu.
Change Print Range to Current View.
Change Page Scaling to Fit to Printable Area
Check Auto-Rotate and Center
Print
I’ve got no idea if this can be accomplished, but I’d be happy for any pointers, tips, hints or especially solutions!
So the PDF itself is something you have no control over, and is presumably updated every day?
Maybe the easiest way would be to just record the relevant mouse movements into a macro and play that back every day. You can try iMacros for Firefox or Autohotkey for Windows. It should in theory be a simple matter with the recorder…
I guess you want to do this on your own computer, hence the “admin access”, but I think Automator on Macs can do it. Something like get pdf > pdf to image > crop and rotate > print.
This is similar to a painting I’m working on, involving 90 small squares from a single pdf image the size of the canvas. What’s different is that all of my squares are rotated, in 1-degree increments (0 degrees to 89 degrees), so I have to rotate the entire image for each square, then print from a template with a square “hole” in it.
The fact that you’re printing the same area each time makes it easier (plus, you’re not rotating anything). I’ll see whether I can utilize any of your macro. Just be glad you have to do this only once a day.