# Perspective Report Viewer -- printing

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/perspective-report-viewer-printing/64058>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Tags:** perspective\
**Created:** [September 14, 2022, 3:05pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/perspective-report-viewer-printing/64058 "2022-09-14T15:05:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bhollett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c57346/32.png) [@bhollett](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/bhollett)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2022, 3:05pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/perspective-report-viewer-printing/64058/1 "2022-09-14T15:05:11Z")

</div>

I’m working on converting a system to Perspective that includes several statistics reporting screens. In the existing, these screens can be printed to get a hard copy of the report. It seemed like creating these screens using the Reports module and showing them with Perspective’s Report Viewer component would give that functionality; the documentation describes Report Viewer as providing “an easy way to view and print reports in a Perspective View”.  
But having created a report and a Perspective page to view it, I can’t find any way to actually print the report. The closest I can get is downloading it as a pdf, which the user can then (presumably) print however they want. (I’m also exploring just recreating the report layout on a normal Perspective screen and using the browser’s built in print function, but this is more complicated for the user, and the output isn’t that great.)  
Is there a way to print a report on demand from the Perspective Report Viewer? Am I missing something, or is downloading a pdf the best I can do?  
Any insight is appreciated.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2022, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/perspective-report-viewer-printing/64058/2 "2022-09-14T15:14:56Z")

</div>

Downloading the PDF is the best you can do in a browser-based environment. ~~Most modern browsers with show them in a tab with appropriate UI for user-triggered printing.~~

Your other option is to configure one or more network printers on the gateway and print to those.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bhollett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c57346/32.png) [@bhollett](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/bhollett)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2022, 3:18pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/perspective-report-viewer-printing/64058/3 "2022-09-14T15:18:28Z")

</div>

Thanks, I had a feeling that’s how it was. Just wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing something obvious.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2022, 3:21pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/perspective-report-viewer-printing/64058/4 "2022-09-14T15:21:25Z")

</div>

Actually, `system.perspective.download()` tells the browser to save the file, not open in a tab. You might want to consider storing your PDFs in your database so you can access them by URL (via my free [Blob Server](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/automation-professionals-blob-server-module/57970) module or via WebDev). That will trigger your browser’s PDF UI.