NoPrintDialogs Keeps Returning!

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Posted on by Jim Lines

Greetings,

I'm familiar with how the infamous NoPrintDialogs switch in the dex.ini works, but it seems no matter how many times I remove the entry or set it to NoPrintDialogs=FALSE (we want it to appear) it returns after some period of time.

We're on GP2013 SP2 and are having this on a single terminal server.

Any suggestion how I can get this setting to remain? I'm not using named printers, but I've read a few posts about configuring this is you do not want the print dialog.

Thanks!
Jim

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Bill Campbell 12 on at

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Just a question, what happens if you don't put anything into that setting. By default that is not an included setting (is it?)

I know that in my installations, long standing clients, that if we want to stop them - we add the line - if they are to be displayed all the time, we do nothing.

Not sure if this is valid any longer, but that is how I recall having done installations over the past 'bunch of years'

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Richard Wheeler 75,850 Moderator on at

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Are you logged into the T/ S as admin? Is anyone else on the server while you are making this change? Check the time stamp on the dex.ini file when you know the change has been made and then compare it after it comes back. Better yet, copy the dex.ini to a local machine and make the change and make sure it sticks. Then when you are sure no one is connected to the T/S put it back. Finally, make sure everyone is using the same dex.ini and that you do not have multiple copies on the server.

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L Vail 65,271 on at

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Hi,

In addition to my colleagues suggestions, I have one more. If you have the GP Power Tools application from Winthrop Development www.winthropdc.com/products.htm you can manage each Dex.ini file from a single master. I'm not sure why your .ini files would be changing, and I agree the default setting is to show the print dialogs (without the switch), but this application will give you the strong arm to set all of the users the way you want.

Kind regards,

Leslie

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Beat Bucher GP Gee... 28,058 Moderator on at

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Jim,

If you share the DEX.INI file from a single source to all the TS users, chances are that someone may have access to GP and uses a Named Printer definition to output a job, and this may reset the settings in the DEX.ini...

As Leslie suggested, you could use the GPPT (GP PowerTools) to manage centrally the DEX.ini settings for the users..

David Musgrave documented the issue with NoPrintDialogs in his former blog : blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/.../microsoft-dynamics-gp-2013-printer-selection-named-printers-page-orientation-and-the-system-print-dialog

Another way to manage this (and eventually better control), is to use a batch file to run the GP client on your TS.. That's the avenue that I chose, since it provides a much better control, especially in a context where your users may have different monitor configurations. Check my blog post about this : dyngpbeat.wordpress.com/.../using-dynamics-gp-in-a-citrix-ts-environment

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Jim Lines 4 on at

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WOW - I got all the experts to respond on this one! Thanks for all the great responses (I've actually see most of your contributions on this topic in my search!).

To throw a few things out there that you've all touched upon:

The dex.ini is indeed local to each terminal server and is shared by all users connected to that TS.

To my knowledge, none of our users has configured Named Printers as they should not have access to this function.

We do not have separate dex.ini files for each user - should I and what is the benefit/drawback?

The times I have changed the setting back, users have been logged into GP (which kind of makes sense and is an obvious oversight on my part!). I'll try Richard's suggestion on this one.

Leslie/Beat: #teammusgrave lol, I'm still using SDT, but need to upgrade to GPPT!

Beat: You mention "monitor configurations." Are you talking physical monitors? If so, how can I look at that in the dex.ini?

Lastly, I seem to remember someone posting the definitions of all the entries in the dex.ini file and what they do. I know some of these are covered in the SDT, is there more detail in GPPT? Does anyone have a link to the post?

Thanks again everyone!

Jim

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Jim Lines 4 on at

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Also, if I use the SDT to override, is this the correct setting?

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Beat Bucher GP Gee... 28,058 Moderator on at

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Hi Jim,

No, the way it works is that the variable goes on one line and the Value (TRUE) on the second line (see the PDF user guide of GPPT).

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David Musgrave MVP ... 14,095 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi Jim

Use Setting Exact Match mode with the setting as NoPrintDialogs and the Value as FALSE.

As long as you understand that this can have negative effects on Named Printers (which you said you were not using), then that is fine.

David

PS: Thanks to my #teammusgrave supporters, Leslie and Beat. I always love it when my tools are offered as solutions.

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Jim Lines 4 on at

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Thanks Béat!

Thanks David!

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Beat Bucher GP Gee... 28,058 Moderator on at

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Jim,

To get back to your particular question regarding the monitors... yes I'm talking about physical displays.. In the old days when everyone had only a single 17" or 19" monitor, it was not a big deal to share the same DEX.ini, though it quickly became pretty big due to all the local printers that had been mapped from each users..

The day people started asking for a second (or third) display to work more efficiently, it started also to become an issue with shared DEX.ini's .. I've had users calling me saying that their GP wouldn't start anymore from the CITRIX server, but they could see the icon in the task bar... Now the trick was that GP was effectively started, waiting for user input, but users couldn't "See" it because it was off-screen.. As a previous user equiped with a dual-monitor setup had moved the main GP window to the second display, and closed GP from there, the DEX.ini was updated on exit with the X-Y positions from the window :

WindowPosX=132

WindowPosY=40

In clear, those values were sometimes negative and represented in Absolute Coordinates, the actual top left corner of the main GP window. Thus, all you had to do was to reset those variables to 0,0 and relaunch GP. Or you could also use the 'magic' trick to move the hidden GP window back to the main display by pressing ALT-SPACE BAR and select the 'Move' option from the pull-down menu, then use the keyboard arrows to move the window back in sight.

Nonetheless, this became a serious problem and that was one of the major trigger to individual DEX.ini files.

David added later on the SDT (and now GPPT) a feature that would make sure the main GP window could never be 'off-screen' from the physical display to avoid such issues, making the individual DEX.ini file less of an issue.

Hope this helps.

PS: Leslie Vail (and Victoria Yudin too I believe) has posted once a long blog entry about all the DEX.ini switches : https://community.dynamics.com/gp/b/gplesliev/archive/2014/02/20/dex-ini-switches-my-complete-list

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