I’ve used methods in the past for creating printer-friendly versions of SharePoint pages, with varying degrees of success.But what I wanted was a simple, flexible solution that could easily be applied to existing sites.I found one here:http://www.iotap.com/Downloads/SharepointWebParts.aspx (scroll to the bottom).
Now this solution isn’t going to work for every situation you’ll encounter, but for several of my publishing sites it fit the bill nicely.Basically the solution as it comes will dynamically produce a new page consisting of the content inside the master page main placeholder – essentially the main content of your page, without the navigation, branding, etc. that can really clutter a printout.
It does this with a custom script that grabs a handle on a DIV, and then dynamically builds a new page based on its contents.A nice feature is that it also pops open your IE browser’s Print dialog.
If you’re a developer, one look at the code and you’ll likely come up with more ideas for taking this approach in other directions.On one publishing site, I only wanted a sub-section of the page to be printed, so I simply added a custom DIV to my Page Layout files and modified the script accordingly.
The solution comes with a web part that generates the print link, but you can also easily add the link to your master page directly, and completely control how and when it displays.
Thanks to the folks at IOTAP for coming up with a simple, clean approach to printing SharePoint pages.
