R – Suppressing the Save As dialog on Microsoft XPS Document Writer when converting GDI To XPS

You can't reliably print by spawning Acrobat Reader unless you give it a desktop session and there will be a user there, because it sometimes pops up dialogs that need user attention.

Also it violates Adobe's licence if used unattended.

You can, however print using Ghostscript.

There is a C# interface to Ghostscript called Ghostscript.Net that I've used successfully on some very large projects. Both Ghostscript and Ghostcript.Net are free & open source.

It's a couple of months late, but here we go.

2 questions, two answers.

Question 1: How can I save an xps file by printing to a virtual printer without using the Save File As dialog?

Answer 1: You were close. I think you're looking for

Doc.DefaultPageSettings.PrinterSettings.PrintToFile = True Doc.DefaultPageSettings.PrinterSettings.PrintFileName = "C:\Users\POConnell\Documents\t.xps"

Here is my implementation: (Legal paper size, landscape mode)

        Using prn As New PrintDocument
            With prn
                .PrinterSettings.PrinterName = "Microsoft XPS Document Writer"
                AddHandler .PrintPage, _
                   AddressOf Me.PrintPageHandler
                .DefaultPageSettings.Landscape = landscape
                .DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize = New PaperSize("Legal", 850, 1400)
                If My.Computer.FileSystem.FileExists("C:\temp\Log.oxps") Then My.Computer.FileSystem.DeleteFile("C:\temp\Log.oxps")
                .DefaultPageSettings.PrinterSettings.PrintToFile = True
                .DefaultPageSettings.PrinterSettings.PrintFileName = "C:\temp\Log.oxps"
                .Print()
                RemoveHandler .PrintPage, _
                   AddressOf Me.PrintPageHandler
            End With
        End Using

As you can see, I use the oxps file format, but it should still work just the same for you.

Question 2: it throws an error 'you do not have permission to write to that file...' if I attempt to overwrite an existing file.

Answer 2: Check if the file already exists prior to printing the file, and delete it if it does. Of course it will fail attempting to create a file that already exists.

For some reason using My.Computer.FileSystem.DeleteFile is faster than the traditional Kill() and System.IO.File.Delete, which both require the thread to sleep for ~1-200ms prior to recreating the file, or else a different access denied error will occur.

Hopefully this helps someone in the future!