FEBRUARY TUTOR ■

PRINTING WITH A PDA

printing
N ot so many people do it—but they pro b a b ly would if they knew how. What are
talking about? Printing with a PDA of course. In this guide you through the va r i o u s
ways you can print the contents of your personal digital assistant onto plain old
fashioned paper. It’s much simpler than you would imagine.
he ability to produce a hard copy programs – Date Book, Address List, To Do ical connection from the PDA to the PC.

T of information stored in your PDA

can be extremely convenient,
allowing you to create full fea-
tured documents wherever you are, without
having to lug a notebook around. You can
always print from your PDA indirectly, by
first transferring the data to a PC using stan-
dard synchronisation tools. For more direct
printing, third-party utilities let you beam
PDA files to infrared-capable printers.
Palm’s standard PIM, Palm Desktop, pro-
vides several easy-to-access options for
printing records from the four standard Palm
List and Memo Pad – which are synchronised
between Palm devices and PCs via HotSync.
With Pocket PCs from companies such as
Casio, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, you
can use Microsoft’s ActiveSync 3.1 to syn-
chronise, copy and move files between your
PDA and desktop PC.
Both Palm devices and Pocket PCs support
third-party applications for printing direct-
ly to desktop PC printers via serial, parallel
and infrared ports. We focused on printing
via infrared ports, because this method is
convenient, fast and does not require a phys-
PALM TO PC TO PRINTER
Once you HotSync your Palm records with
Palm Desktop, you can use the applica-
tion’s Print or Drag to: commands to format
records for printing.
When you click the Print button in Palm
Desktop, you are presented with different
f o rmatting options, depending on the
records selected. For example, when print-
ing Address List records, you have the option
to print all records in the viewed category
or only those you have highlighted. You

88 February 2001 www.DITnet.co.ae ■ www.PCmag-mideast.com


With an infrared-enabled printer such as the Canon BJC-85, you can beam documents directly from your
Palm or Pocket PC device to the printer. All you need is an IR printing application and a clear line of sight.
can choose to print only phone numbers and
check whether to print associated notes.
The Palm Desktop Drag to: command,
which works with Address List, To Do List
and Memo Pad, is a more powerful printing
feature. You can drag records from all three
applications to Microsoft Word or the Win-
dows Clipboard; Address List and To Do
List records can also be dragged to Micro-
soft Excel. Icons for the corresponding
Microsoft applications are displayed in the
lower right corner of each application’s
screen in Palm Desktop. When you move
records from Palm Desktop to a Microsoft
application, you are presented with options
for formatting your PDA data for printing.
For example, to drag Address List records
to Microsoft Word, open the Address List
s c reen in Palm Desktop, highlight the
records you want to move by pressing the
Shift and Down arrow keys, and then drag
your mouse to the Word icon. Word auto-
matically launches a menu of address for-
Figure 1: The Drag to: function in Palm Desktop automatically launches
Word and formats a document to print the records you’ve chosen.
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PRINTING WITH A PDA
matting options, including templates for
form letters, labels, envelopes and tables.
D i ff e rent formatting option menus are
launched for various combinations of Palm
applications and Microsoft programs.
PALM TO PRINTER VIA INFRARED
There are several infrared-capable printers
on the market from popular manufacturers
like Canon, Epson and HP. Various free or
low cost third-party PDA applications enable
infrared printing. When you connect a print-
er and PDA via infrared, you will be amazed
at how quickly and easily you can print
wirelessly.
For illustration, we installed a program with
broad functionality
and good docu-
mentation, Stevens-
C reek Software ’ s
PalmPrint, Version
2.6. 22 ( www .
stevenscreek.com;
Figure 2: Checking the Files box in ActiveSync lets you transfer all your Pocket
PC files to your desktop PC for backup and printing.
■ FEBRUARY TUTOR
$39.95 direct). We used a Palm IIIC for print-
ing via infrared on a Canon BJC-85 printer.
With PalmPrint, you can print standard Memo
Pad, To Do List and Clipboard records as
well as records from various other third-party
Palm applications including JFILEfrom Land-
J Systems and MultiMail Pro from Actual Soft-
ware. You can print e mail, orders, databas-
es, documents, game scoring sheets,
timesheets and journals.
To set up PalmPrint on the Palm, you iden-
tify your printer type from a drop-down list
of eight standard printing languages, select-
ing infrared as the means of connection.
You then change the formatting defaults, if
desired, for number of lines per page, num-
ber of characters per line, margins, fonts,
point sizes and page orientations.
Before you print any records, you should
test the infrared connection between your
Palm device and the printer. The PalmPrint
main menu has a selection labelled Test IR
Communications. Click on the test menu,
align the infrared ports on your Palm and
printer, and the message, Looking for IR
Printer displays on the Palm. The distance
between the devices is critical to establish-
ing a connection. Depending on your print-
er, experiment with a range from 4 to 20
inches. When the connection is established,
a confirmation message appears, such as
February 2001 89
FEBRUARY TUTOR ■
Printer ID: BJC-85.
PalmPrint displays three large buttons on
its main menu which you use to select prints
of Clipboard, Memo Pad or To Do List
records. For Memo Pad and To Do List, you
can print all records, all records in a category
or a single record. There are options for
printing completed To Do List records and
notes. Once you have selected the records
to print, tap the Print button, align the Palm
and printer infrared ports and watch the
Palm screen for print status.
When you use PalmPrint with another
third-party application, you can print what-
ever records the application’s developer has
programmed to integrate with PalmPrint.
Most applications add print icons, so you
don’t have to launch PalmPrint; the print
software functions in the background like a
printer driver on a PC.
POCKET PC TO PC TO PRINTER
When you want to upload a Pocket PC file
to your PC for printing, you must use
ActiveSync to convert the file for the desk-
top application. When ActiveSync converts
a file for desktop manipulation, all the for-
matting attributes you specified on the Pock-
et PC are maintained. You can copy or move
files on a one-time basis or set up file syn-
chronisation between your Pocket PC and
desktop system so that file changes made on
one device are reflected on the other device.
To copy or move a file from your Pocket
PC, open the ActiveSync application and
click on the Explore icon. The files in your
Pocket PC will display in Windows Explor-
er. Use the standard Windows Explorer
copy, cut and paste functions to move the
file from the Mobile Device folder into the
desktop folder of your choice. You can then
access the file from a desktop application for
editing and printing.
Some of the Pocket PC applications you
can synchronise with a desktop counter-
part are Pocket Word, Pocket Excel and
Pocket PowerPoint.
To set up file synchronisation, click on
the Options icon in ActiveSync. On the Sync
Options tab, click on Files in the list of infor-
mation types. When you check the Files
box, a special folder is created for storing all
files you create on your Pocket PC. A short-
cut to this folder appears automatically on
your desktop and is stored in C:\My Docu-
ments\device name. Under Windows NT,
the files are stored in C:\Winnt\Profiles\your
username\Personal\device name.
Synchronised files are available for print-
ing from your PC, but note that not all file
attributes in desktop applications are
retained when a file is converted back to
your Pocket PC. For example, Pocket Word
will not support headers and margins you
90 February 2001
PRINTING WITH A PDA
add to a Microsoft Word document.
POCKET PC TO PRINTER VIA INFRARED
Using Bsquare’s bPrint 2.0 application (a
feature included in bFax Pro 5.0, $50 street;
www.bsquare.com) on a Casio Casseopeia
E-115 Pocket PC, we printed documents via
an infrared connection to a Canon BJC-85
printer. To set up printing preferences, tap
the Edit tab on bPrint’s main menu. Select
Options and choose your formatting options
from the drop-down menus for font type,
point size, paragraph tab stops and margins.
Return to the Edit tab on the main menu
and select Add Document. From the Open
screen you can scroll through a Pocket PC
file list and highlight files to move to bPrint’s
main menu document list. Whenever you
want to remove a file from bPrint’s document
list, highlight it, tap on the Edit tab and select
Remove Document. If you don’t recognise
a file on the list, you can open it by double
tapping its filename. Figure 4: When you use bPrint to beam a Pocket
To print a file, highlight it on bPrint’s doc- PC document directly to the printer, this status
ument list and tap on the Print tab. A con- screen tells you which file is printing and how the
job is progressing.
nection setup screen launches. Select the
printer type from the drop-down menu and
select Infrared Port in the Connection menu.
Enter the number of copies you are printing
and tap on the check box if you want a pro-
grammed delay between page printings.
Note that you can also navigate to the for-
matting options screen from the Print screen.
Unlike PalmPrint, bPrint offers only three
choices for printer language compatibility:
Epson ESC/p2-compatible printer; Epson
ESC/p2 PDA printer and PCL-compatible
printer. If you are not sure of your printer
type, select Epson compatibility, which is
the most common printer configuration. We
chose Epson ESC/p2 Compatible Printer for
the Canon BJC-85 printer.
Once you have made your settings, you
need to align the infrared ports on your
Pocket PC and printer with each other and
then tap the Print! button on bPrint’s con-
nection setup screen. The print status screen
that pops up will display two fields: Printing
File, which indicates the name of the file
you have selected, and Status, which flash-
es progress messages as the file prints. You
should see four messages display sequen-
tially in the Status field: Configuring Com-
munication Port; Preparing Document; For-
matting Document; and Printing Page 1. The
Printing Page message updates the page
number with each page break. You should
position the Pocket PC near the printer on a
desktop or other flat surface for a steady
connection.
Moving PDA files to paper is easy, both Figure 3: Once your Palm device is lined up with
the IR port on the printer, PalmPrint steps through
through PC synchronisation programs and the printing process and updates the status as the
through infrared connections to printers with job runs.
IrDA ports.
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