Comments on: Is there a way to show a printer file overlay in spooled file? I need to email a document with an overlay.

By: woodengineer

woodengineer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:53:29 +0000

We have the same requirement with order acknowlegments and invoices. Solved it with Gumbo Software tools. Its a reasonably priced tool that renders your spool file with overlay as a PDF which can easily be attached to an e-mail, which the same command can launch.

Its a very good value! BVS Tools has a similar product which is also good quality.

By: danthedane

danthedane — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:22:43 +0000

UPS… System mixed my comment up with parts of YuVa’s ..
Here comes a resend of my answer:

You might find some usefull capabilities by studying the System i Navigator’s ‘Basic Operations’/’Printer Output’. This will display your spoolfile – right click an entry and up comes several options for output.

To be more precise in answering your question, you must tell which overlay method you use (IPDS ?). You may google ‘InterForm’ to study a product that can solve your problem fully.

best luck

By: danthedane

danthedane — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:18:16 +0000

You might find some usefull capabilities by studying the System i Navigator’s ‘Basic Operations’/'Printer Output’. This will display your spoolfile – right click an entry and up comes several options for output. + Check out Spool Converter from

- To be more precise in answering your question, you must tell which overlay method you use (IPDS ?). You may google ‘InterForm’ to study a product that can solve your problem fully.

- best luck

By: tomliotta

tomliotta — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:25:52 +0000

Just a random guess here… No.

I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to “print” it. The question would be about what “device” would do the printing. E.g., you can have software printers that generate a .PDF file that’s capable of being converted into a proper MIME attachment for SMTP e-mailing. I’d expect that the .PDF format is the most common.

You’ll need to rework your mental paradigm of the concept of “printing”.

Tom