Printing the Digest

[MyNameIsScott]

I am unable to print a digest that includes all of the selected messages.

I've tried a couple of things to try and isolate the problem -

1 Reducing the number of messages per page did reduce the index portion, but the message bodies were not completely printed. Whether set at 50, 100, or 500 the printed report would include all selected messages in the index but only print 25 message bodies before reverting to headers only.

2 The selection was changed to see if there was an extraneous character in some message that was being interpreted as a command during the print. The results were the same.

3  I've looked through the settings available through menus and didn't recognize anything that would affect this.

It is true that I can get a valid printout if the selection is limited to 25 messages, but there are several hundred total that I would like to print.

Is there an internal counter, or something in a .ini file that I need to check?

Thanks for your help,

Scott

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Scott,

I'm not sure whats going on but you can work round it for the moment by setting the number of messages per page to a very large number and then do highlight all (CTRL+A), copy (CTRL+C) and paste (CTRL+V) into a word document and then print the word document.

Cheers,

Wilson.

[MyNameIsScott]

Thanks for the suggestion.

That works passably well, but when the copied digest is pasted into Word the nested tables get pretty deep at the 25th message and Word gets confused on how things should be displayed.

While looking at the digests I've printed, I noted that the first time this occured was when I printed the June messages on 7-2-2006. I didn't notice at the time and I am just now getting caught up on August and September messages.

Here's my procedure: use pgoffline to capture messages from the mg-mgb group, then print them as digests to PDF by month.  I use X1 search to index the contents of these and other files, and having messages from this group in PDF format makes it easy to research problems, questions, and suggested solutions.

It's part of "doing my homework" before asking a question. It's amazing how often someone else has already asked, and I find most of the solutions I need in the archives.

It looks like the digest mode view is having trouble formatting the message bodies. If I copy the mdf file, and open it with Access 2002, I see that beginning with message 23114 (in this group) received on 3-4-2006 at 5:10PM the message fields now begin with: <table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td> <pre> where before that they simply began with: <pre>.

In June the last correctly printed message was 24689 received at 4:15AM on 6-6-06, and 24690 received at 11:01AM on that date was the first one where the message body didn't display or print.

With the mdb file open in Access 2002, if I copy the contents of the message field from both records into Word my untrained eyes don't recognize anything that might explain the change in handling. I remember from DOS days though that a control code buried within a data field could screw with displayed and printed output. If there is something like this occurring now, I'm not recognizing it.

Sadly, I'm unskilled with Access and don't have a clue how the digest print and display routines work in PGOffline. Even after opening the mdb file in Access I can't come up with a report format that comes close to the efficiency and readability of the one in PGOffline.

I'll keep downloading messages, and looking at my issue from different angles to see if I recognize something. If it is of interest to you I'll be happy to upload the message file. It's only about 150MB at the moment.

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Scott,

Please send me 500 messages before and after the problem starts.

You can select the start and end point of an Export in File--> Export to Folder. Double click on the group to export and you'll get a dialogue box that will let you make a selection.

 A 1000 message mdb file ought to zip down to about 1Mb which you can just mail me at

wilson.logan (at) ntlworld.com

Thanks,

Wilson.

[MyNameIsScott]

That is done.

I could also upload the archive I have to be added to the archive files available on your website. I'll need to get permission from the list owner first though.

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Scott,

Yes, I see that Word is having a hard time.

I did a paste into Notepad & it seems perfectly happy. I suggest you use Notepad instead of Word.

Cheers,

Wilson.

[MyNameIsScott]

There does seem to be a particular message at which the issue begins. This is only limited testing, but efore that message, a digest of any length can be printed. After that message, only a digest of 25 or fewer messages will display or print correctly.

I tried editing the contents of the message that seemed to be the transition, or at least it was the first one that exhibited the behavior, editing to remove long strings of characters such as message IDs didn't produce the good result that was hoped for.

[Wilson Logan]

Its probably related to some control character embedded in the HTML from Yahoo or something in the HTML that Word interprets as a control character. Either way, it appears to be an interaction between Yahoo & Word so I don't think there's much we can do about it.

The Notepad workaround works for me.

Cheers,

Wilson.