virtual fax

i'm trying to print out a newegg invoice and matching rebate form. i don't have a printer.

my choices are: direct it to some sort of file or other, and email to someone to print FOR me; borrow their printer or carry my laptop over to their house and print it out myself; or log on to newegg on their OWN laptop and print it out wholly on their system.

if possible, i'd like to do the first.

the invoice appears as a popup. it lacks the "file" etc bar, so i don't know how to invoke "save as...". isn't there a trick to turning it into a normal IE tab/window? (some F# or ALT-F# ?)

it DOES have a URL bar (often missing in popups like this), so i can cut/copy the direct URL. alas, when i paste that back into a normal IE tab/window, it toggles back to some earlier newegg page. "secure"/"non-secure" issue.

bottom line: i can't figure out any trick to SAVE the page.

if i just go ahead and click print sans printer, otoh, i get a properties popup with "add printer", "fax" and "MS XPS document writer". there's also a "print to file" box over on the side, but it's greyed out (uncheckable). but that's exactly what the XPS option is aniwes, no?

so...is XPS common? i've managed to save a virtual copy thus, but i'm afraid the person with the printer (XP) won't be able to handle it. i was really expecting MHT or maybe PDF.

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lesser issue: right now, it's splitting the invoice into 2 pages. i've turned off the headers & footers & zeroed out the margins, but it still doesn't quite fit. isn't there some "%age" setting where printouts can be scaled? i thought this was routine.

in the print preview windows, it looks great set to 85%. but i guess that's just the viewer -- it doesn't carry over to the file like that when i actually "print" it.
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i suppose there are 3d party apps for all this, but what is the easiest, BARE BONES way of "prepping" a page for someone ELSE to print? i didn't think this would be such a project!

TIA

 

You and any recipient you send it to, will need XPS VIEWER
,http://www.microsoft.com/korea/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/what-is-the-xps-viewer

 

I use doPDF, it will print the job as a pdf file.

 

i have XPS viewer; but it is likely to be on anyone else's PC? or on some machine at kinko's...if that's where i end up printing it?

or should i go ahead and "print" it and send them some sort of universal "print job" file instead? i.e., have my own XPS or Adore or w/e "compile" it into pixel form, just waiting for ANY printer that it gets dumped to?

not quite sure how to do that, but i could see the logic in that.

 

I have never needed this, but as foogoo has said it appears to convert any file to pdf, so that any pc/laptop only needs adobe reader, or, similr to read it and then print it.

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5545

 

yes, i decided PDF was a safer bet. the PDF "converters" so far haven't managed to succeed on an XPS file, tho.

as for "intercepting" the original print job (which sounds easier, actually), i installed doPDF and PrimoPDF. so far no go, tho. they appear under "printers", but they ask me to save file as "*.* (all files)" -- the fact that they're not EXPECTING pdf in the first place is a warning sign.

i try FORCING ".pdf" on there (i.e., just enter filename.pdf in full), but it's not working. primo gives me some ungodly huge file (4M) and do gives me a null file (0M)...neither of which will open later on as a PDF.

incidentally, primo causes "print to file" to be UNgreyed! but if it's INTERCEPTING the file, i shouldn't have this checked anyway, right? i've tried it both ways -- unchecked i get that 4M thing, checked i get NOTHING.

:confused

 

Sorry, I have been off -line, but I tried out XPSToPDF, AND ITS A FREE SIMPLE TOOL THAT SOLVES THE PROBLEM
http://www.micre13b.com/xps-to-pdf-converter.html

I TESTED THIS ON A COUPLE OF MY XPS DOCUMENTS- DOES THE JOB IN TWO SIMPLE MOVES
1/After installing, just click the program from the new startup listed, and choose file-open
2/Then click convert within that same dropdown, to convert XPS to pdf
Bingo, you have a copy in pdf wherever you decided to save it.