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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T10:40:35+00:00

In our VB6 application, when the user’s default printer is set to Microsoft Office

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In our VB6 application, when the user’s default printer is set to Microsoft Office Document Image Writer the following line of code causes the application to throw error number 380 (Invalid property value).

Printer.Orientation = vbPRORLandscape

If you are unfamiliar with what this line is doing, it is responsible for ensuring that the user’s default printer is set up to print whatever is provided to it in landscape mode, and also provides landscape orientation dimensions (height/width) (on the Printer object) so following code can properly base item placement coordinates on the page.

I’ve Goggled around and it seems to be a generally accepted (and complained about) “missing feature” from the MODIW driver, for example see this thread. There were some workarounds like presenting the user with the Windows Printer Settings window (after presumably instructing them to select landscape in the options) or checking if the printer is the MODIW, and then preventing the user from generating the document that needs to be in landscape mode. There was another suggesting involving something called DEVMODE, but I didn’t understand this suggestion, nor did I find a decent example, nor did I find anyone confirming that it worked.

I’m kinda at my wits end. Physical printers have no issue with this line; even the Microsoft XPS Document Writer and the various PDF printers I have tried have no issues with this line. I’m throwing this out here, hoping some awesome VB6 dev has found some previously undocumented way of making the orientation change with the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer driver.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Here is a weird workaround you could try for this weird bug. Microsoft offer a free DLL that allows you to change the default settings for the printer, rather than just temporarily setting to landscape for the current document using the Printer object.

    So you could try something like this (sample form code from the KnowledgeBase article). It changes the default orientation to landscape before doing any printing. Then it restores the original default orientation when the form is unloaded. I haven’t tried this, don’t know whether it will work.

    Dim obj As PageSet.PrinterControl

Private Sub Command1_Click()
  On Error GoTo errorhandler:
  Set obj = New PrinterControl
  obj.ChngOrientationLandscape
  <Now do the printing>

  Exit Sub

errorhandler:
   MsgBox Err.Description
   obj.ReSetOrientation

End Sub


Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)

  obj.ReSetOrientation 'This resets the printer to portrait.'

End Sub
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