Printing Reports Out

Hola Amigos:

This is my first crack at any VB so bear with my horrid newbie questions. First let me give my issue: I want to print a report out, landscape style one a page. This report will be multiple pages (roughly 20). The report is will have about 10 colums of numerical data with a label at the top.

What I have done is created a hidden form with a header on it and dynamcially fill about 150 text boxes with my calculations based on ranges of values. This method works great but i'm using frmFormName.Printform to print which is horridly slow for 20 pages and each page comes up to 900kb which is killing smaller non laser printers!!!!

I really need a better or a new method on how to fix this!
Thanks

There are many methods to print from Vb.
1) use crystall reports or similar utility
2) use dataReport that comes with vb. You have to use dataenvironment for this. There are methods to dinamicaly populate the dataReport. see the microsoft site for sample code.
2) use Printer object ( Printer.print etc )
3) create a text file (open "filename" for output as #1)
a) load the text file into RichTextBox and send to printer. This helps as a view also.
b) you may directly send the file to the printer using shell commands.
4) create file filestreamObject and do as above.

With 1 and 2 you may design the pages as you like. but with 3 and 4 , formating functions are limited.

as for speed while printing through windows.
1) printer should be bi directional for windows. It may bi-directional for DOS but not for windows.
2) use Draft printing.
3) as far as possible use only one font / size
4) in method 3 & 4 use fixed with fonts like "courier new" to obtain best alignment.

Hope this helps
Suresh